


Peddled

by lexyhamilton (ohheichoumyheichou)



Category: Peter Pan & Related Fandoms, Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: 18th Century, Alternate Universe - Historical, Historical Fantasy, Hurt/Comfort, London, M/M, Major Illness, Medical Procedures, Poverty, Prostitution, Read at your own discretion, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Steampunk, This is a messed up fic, Underage Sex, seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 02:11:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2370581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohheichoumyheichou/pseuds/lexyhamilton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is an AU based around the premise that Hook captured Peter, brought him back to late 17th century London, and sold him off to a brothel.  Years later, guilt makes him go back and look for him.<br/>This was a strange idea, written a while ago, but with all the "legitimate" Peter Pan AUs that have officially come out since then, this no longer seems as far-fetched.<br/>Major warnings for underage, non consensual sex, generally dark themes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Listen, I peddle ass. It’s what I do. I don’t know every other venue in London. Now, do you want to buy time or what? They’re all eight of them very pretty, and clean as virgins.”

Hook left with an exasperated sigh, trudging back out into the snow. He had left his captive in what seemed to be a more or less respectable bennyhouse, years ago. Since then he had managed to acquire more loot than notoriety and eventually established himself in Italy. It was a risk to even come back to his native soil, but his conscience had been nagging at him lately about the boy.

Hook knew Peter would not age, even outside Neverland. Three years they had sailed together, Hook determined to raise him up into the profession, but the boy never changed—always too weak to tie a good sailor’s knot or do some useful carpentry, or participate in any raids. His depressed state even deprived him of any value Hook might have gained exhibiting him, as the power of flight disappeared within days of leaving the island.

He could have easily kept him on as a cabin boy, Hook thought wistfully. Even as a toy used solely for pleasure, Peter would have been most satisfying, but Hook only learned this on the night of the transaction, when he took the boy to a room in the brothel to teach him the fundamentals of what was expected of him. 

Peter had cried not to be left behind, tugging at Hook's coat, clinging to his boots in desperation even when he was pushed away roughly, though not moments ago he had been raped rather methodically by the man for whose protection he was begging now. Hook stayed in the tavern a while longer, unbeknownst to Peter, checking that the master of the house knew how to take care of the boy and pick clients for him. Satisfied that Peter would adjust to his new life eventually, Hook left for the sea again. He had asked for a hefty price, but more to show the keeper that the boy was a valuable commodity than anything else. It was all spending money compared to how much he had come to pirate away later.

He came to the last whorehouse that he knew in Southwark, though he doubted this one even kept boys. He came up to the bar, and rapped three times with his knuckles on the wood. The tavern-keeper looked askance at him before motioning him into the kitchen.

“I’m looking for a boy, about twelve or thirteen…”

“We don’t keep that around here. Only girls.”

“Do you know what happened to the establishment at the Red Deer?”

“They were broken up.”

“And its workers?”

“Scattered, I’m sure. If you think you’ll ferret out some illegal practice at this place, I dare you to try…”

But Hook had already turned to leave. There was no reassurance that the boy might not have died years ago, but simply returning with no other clues felt disappointing. Hook made his way down the crooked back street heading to his place of lodging, frustrated huffs condensing in the cold winter air. He had given up his ship, and would have to await the next departure of a Mediterranean bound vessel. Coming out on a wider street, Hook saw a large crowd gathered around a performer doing something either ridiculous or extraordinary. In any case, Hook would have passed by the lowbrow spectacle without a second thought had he not heard a shockingly familiar voice.

“Please, sir, couldja spare a farthing?” 

Hook stared at the child, wearing several layers of grubby clothes. A tattered, all-too-large hat sat low over his eyes, and a dirty handkerchief obscured everything below his nose. The gentleman he was addressing turned away brusquely, and the boy hurried over to another on the fringes of the crowd, outstretching his palms to expose tattered gloves, and clutching the coins he finally received to his chest with fervor.

Hook approached, and found that there was no denying it. He would recognize those eyes anywhere, though it had been a slim chance finding him here so conveniently. He took a guinea out of his pocket and held it up to catch the boy’s gaze. Peter’s eyes bugged out, and he rushed over to the generous stranger. _He doesn’t recognize me_ , Hook thought as he watched the boy hesitantly reach for the coin. Would the urchin run away as soon as the money was in his hands? Had he himself really changed so much in appearance? His hair had grayed perhaps, and he wore it back, as befitted the times. Perhaps the absence of a mustache was throwing him off? Then again, he wondered how much Peter could remember of his origins, seeing the way he acted the perfect common London waif.

“Come into the carriage with me, and I’ll give you all the coins you want.” Peter blinked and looked about uneasily. How noticeable was the boy’s thinness, even with the multiple layers of clothing! “Are you hungry? I’ll buy you anything you want on the way.”

Peter cocked his head, then finally said “Even oranges?”

“Don’t know if they’ll be selling oranges at this time of year…”

“They say the rich can get themselves oranges even in winter.”

“Well, I’ll procure them for you later if you come along. Hurry up now.”

This was the final straw, and the boy’s hand slipped into Hook’s extended one. Hook’s right he was vigilantly keeping under his cloak. They stopped to buy a small bun of bread, which Peter finished off before Hook had time to hail a cabdriver. Before they stepped into the carriage, Peter stopped short, suddenly hesitating again. Finally, he removed the cloth covering his mouth, which Hook had assumed was some feeble device to keep out the cold. Alas, Hook could not help but move back at the sight of the lesions that extended from one corner of those young lips, almost to the very neck.

Noting the frightened reaction, Peter immediately piped up. “I’m not so dirty, sir, I’ll keep it covered, if you like, and if you had some face powder about you, I’d be more than happy to obscure it all! I can still do it, sir, you needn’t use a new sheath for me if that’ll be too much trouble…”

Hook felt sicker from this onslaught of wretched prattle than anything gracing Peter’s face, but the boy continued frantically, seeing his patron’s hesitation as an opportunity sliding away. “Please, sir, whatever your likes, I’ll perform. And this hair you see… it’s got no lice… I’m only a child, sir, it’s my only livelihood…”

“Just… get into the carriage, boy.” Peter nodded hopefully and climbed in, sliding to the floor into a kneeling position as soon as Hook closed the door. The carriage jolted before taking off, but Peter kept steady, hands already at the buttons of Hook’s breeches.

“Stop that, and get back up on the seat,” Hook said more gruffly than he’d intended. Peter stared wide-eyed before slowly rising back, readjusting the handkerchief to cover his diseased lips. He was sitting on the edge, tense to the point of shaking now, eyes running back and forth as they followed people and buildings rushing by, then returning to the man seated across from him, full of disconcertion—no doubt fearing what sort of inventive entertainment he was going to take part in once they reached their destination.

Hook had not wanted to rescue Peter, and part of him still hoped he could leave the child in someone’s responsible hands and then return to Italy, so he did not care to hint at his identity though he felt sorry for Peter and his palpable anxiety. The boy had to have been on the streets for years, by the looks of him, and yet he was still foolish or desperate enough to climb into a carriage with a strange old man.

“What happened to the whorehouse you served in before?”

Peter startled, eyes avoiding Hook’s before answering. “I was never in no whorehouse, sir. It’s against the law to be hosting boys in whorehouses... Especially not ones so young as me…” Peter looked back at Hook, only to see him arch his eyebrow in a way that made Peter’s gaze slink back to the floor. “Don’t you know?”

“The Red Deer rings no bells?”

“No, sir!” Peter quickly replied, and brought the handkerchief up his face to his very eyes in an attempt to hide the flush of his cheeks. He was probably beginning to regret having gotten involved with such a rake as himself, Hook mused. He saw Peter’s limbs tremble in anticipation of bolting the carriage as soon as it would stop, and beckoned Peter to sit next to him. The boy reluctantly obeyed and they rode on through the narrow streets, enjoying the unusually smooth ride, listening to the carriage’s wheels crunch against the grimy snow—one recollecting a distant past, the other fretting about his immediate future.

***

The boy had to be practically dragged into the tavern, but once inside Hook’s room he stood silent, looking extremely timid and afraid to touch anything, instinctively sensing that the place was a notch above seedy.

Hook sat down into a short legged armchair and opened up the cigar box on the table. “I’ll have them make something warm for you to drink later when the bar downstairs opens.”

Peter stood growing more uncomfortable by the minute—one hand clutching his other arm’s elbow for lack of a better occupation. He wondered how much time he was expected to spend, as well as the likelihood of the gentleman keeping his promise about procuring him fruit for his efforts.

“Shall I strip for you, sir?” he finally offered in desperation, tired of the cold blue gaze boring into him.

Hook exhaled acrid smoke. “Why don’t you.”

 _What a queer_ , Peter thought worriedly as he began peeling himself from his layers. He dared not step on the carpet and stood on the cold hardwood floor, carefully casting the clothes right beside himself so as not to sully anything with his belongings. He worried the man might send him out once he saw what was adorning his body in certain places, but then again he had not been turned away after revealing his mouth. Peter prayed that the gentleman liked to watch. As soon as the last article had joined the pile of the rest on the floor, Peter’s hand slipped across his torso, arching into his own touch. He had not had the opportunity to earn money in the nude for months, but the skill was thankfully well rehearsed in his memory. His eyes fluttered closed and he let a contrived moan escape his lips as both hands slid up and down his body.

“Quit that and turn around,” Hook said, somewhat disconcerted by how automatically the shy boy had morphed into a practiced trollop when his clothes were gone. The frightened boy returned just as quickly as he had been overshadowed by the confident whore, and turned to face the door. Hook approached him, gently goading him to bend down and expose his rear. It was a sorry sight and Hook shuddered when he saw the medley of rashes and sores that adorned the boy’s entire nether region. There was no use leaving him here—even the poorest parish orphanage would admit no one so diseased into their midst. It was to Italy with the boy in tow, then.

“You can straighten yourself out, lad. I only wanted a look.” 

Peter rose up, his eyes so full of tears that Hook felt a pang of guilt though he had certainly done no injury to him just now.

“Boy, why are you crying?”

“It’s just…” the boy was interrupted by a spastic sob. “I was fearing you’d do something nasty and painful like what an old pervert had done me a while ago.”

Hook only arched a brow, but the boy shrank away as if threatened with a blow.

“Please, sir, I don’t want your money, I just want to be on my way. I’m too dirty to service the likes of you, I think…”

Hook slowly took off his cloak revealing the foreshortened arm. Peter’s eyes widened and ran across Hook’s entire frame before the rest of his body finally ventured to run and clutch at Hook’s leather jerkin, as if hanging on for dear life.

“Captain… captain…” he stammered, pulling at his former caretaker, only hazily remembered after all these years. “Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me here again, please take me with you and I’ll mop the deck day and night and wash dishes too. I don’t eat much at all either, and I can sleep in the hold if there’s no room…”

Hook ran his hand through Peter’s hair as the child kept babbling on, smiling wistfully to find that the boy’s claim to having no lice was not entirely honest. “I don’t have a ship of my own anymore, Pan. We’ll be taking a voyage to a much nicer country where I sincerely hope to cure you of this servility of yours. I’d never thought I’d miss that old impish Peter Pan when I left you here.”

Peter blinked at Hook dumbly, then wrapped his arms the man’s torso, wordlessly this time.

***

The ship was to sail in a couple of days, Hook learned, so he ventured to buy the boy a warmer coat for their brief sojourn in the dreary city. Buying for such a grateful recipient was a pleasure, as Peter expressed unmitigated and effusive delight in everything given to him, and at the same time would only diffidently confess his heart’s desire when prodded as Hook led him through the marketplace. Vendors stared at the boy’s now exposed ailment and shook their heads in self-righteous disapproval when they noted the hand clutching the boy with unmistakable possessiveness. None dared say anything however, and Peter hardly felt self-conscious when under the protections of an imposing adult. He indulged himself with the rooster shaped candies he had longed to try for ages, and excitedly picked out gloves for himself which Hook bought without a word of warning about the fact that he would soon have no need for them at his destination.

Hook noticed the careful way Peter sat down on the chair when they returned to the room—overly careful even when he had grown easy in the captain’s presence in the past several hours.

“Does it hurt you inside too?” Hook asked as the boy sat daintily alternating sips of tea with licks at the treacle sweetmeat he held on a stick.

“What does?”

“Your… maladies…”

Peter’s eyelids flickered down for a moment. “Sometimes it’s worse. It’s like a fire that flares up and I an’t able to eat for a day or two, or even swallow my own spittle. And… down there… it feels like a dragon’s taken residence inside me…”

“A dragon?”

“Yes, they breathe fire, didja know? And it’s like a little dragon is clawing at me from inside, all scalding hot, sometimes.” Peter smiled shyly and irresistibly.

“Such fanciful descriptions. And where did you even hear about dragons?”

“Street shows with those puppets have them. But mostly Tom told me about ‘em. I ask him to tell me every night, but he only does when I bring back some money.”

“You pay for stories about dragons?” Hook did not know whether to be amused or dismayed.

“Yes, of course. They even fly, you know. They have wings. And knights slay them so as the lady can marry them then. I like hearing about things that don’t really exist like that.” 

“But Peter, you…” Hook gazed at the boy, who was fiddling with his sweet, but turned his attention back quickly when he noticed Hook trail off. If the boy remembered his own rather fantastic past, he certainly did not show sign of it. And what was the purpose of bringing something like that up now? Hook decided to change course. “So who is this Tom?”

“Oh, he works as a loader on the docks now. I only see him at the taverns though usually. He likes his drink. I sleep in his bed on most nights if I’m not out on the streets working.” There was something disturbing about how blithely the boy was relating his miserable life. “I knew him since my days in the brothel…”

“So you did work at the brothel then, eh?” Hook smirked.

Peter blushed but only slightly. He related how he eventually caught an ailment and was lowered in rank, also doing menial work. On one of his errands to market a warden stopped him and made him reveal where he earned his living. The Red Deer was broken up, the owners were fined, and all its workers were briefly jailed. Tom had been a boy not so much older than Peter and helped keep him safe from the other resentful mollies while they were locked up. The guards liked to make the prettier of the boys perform for them, right in the cells, and Tom began to use Peter for their pleasure, and more importantly, their extra portions of food. When they were released, they kept up the relationship, and by and by raised enough money to purchase a miniscule room in the slums. Not much had changed since then. Tom was now in what must have been his thirties, too old to fetch good money for offering his body, diseased and abused as it was, and made an indifferent living working at odd jobs.

“And he wasn’t surprised when you never changed into a man?”

“He was, I suppose, but he thinks that I’m really an adult. He thinks my hard early life on the ship stunted me. Many people in the pubs around here know I'm much older than I look, but I could convince newcomers they were buying time with a near-virgin. Tom envies me my opportunities, but lately I haven’t been making much with this sore on my face. When we find ourselves in a pinch, I do it in an alley for three pence, and that’s when I get new ailments sometimes, after.”

Hook could not believe his ears. “And what do you think? Are you an adult?”

“I don’t know… I suppose he’s right? I’m not so good at understanding how the world works and such, though, and I like to have Tom by to count on. And I must tell him I’m leaving!” Peter suddenly exclaimed. “He’ll be downright heartbroken, I reckon.”

“Well, if you’d rather stay…”

“No!” Peter interrupted rather forcefully. “No, I want to go with you, even to a hard life at sea.”

“Your days of hard labor are over, Pan, so no need to brace yourself. And we’ll seek out your friend tomorrow, before we leave. I should thank him for keeping an eye out for you, if nothing else.”

Peter’s smile was warmer than the still-steaming tea that he raised to his lips, and Hook found it hard to push down certain guilty feelings rising up as if to spite him.


	2. Chapter 2

They’d been looking for hours, starting at the docks where Tom was supposed to be working, then beginning to make the rounds of the taverns he usually frequented. Most of them were located on the riverbanks, and though there was no summer heat to fester sewage floating in the river, it still stank when low tide revealed the shallows and the filthy debris that was left on them.

It took six inquiries before they came to the right establishment.

“Well, look who’s here!” The barkeep grinned. “And in such a nice warm coat too. Been making good rounds lately?” He eyed the foreign-looking gentleman looming over the boy. 

Peter beamed. “You could say that. Tom hasn’t been in here today, has he?”

“Tom’s in the back. He was just grumbling to me about having to go out and look for you if you weren’t coming back tonight.”

Hook followed Peter’s lanky form as it snaked between densely packed tables. The place was half-full even at this odd hour. The entire bar reeked of smoke, drink, and just a hint of vomit. These were the hangouts of London bums and shirkers, Hook mused. He was sorely tempted to shoot a few people clean through the head when dirty hands groped the boy’s bottom as he passed by them, giving them a meek acknowledging nod instead of being outraged or frightened. This was not his ship, Hook calmed himself, and continued down into the darker corner of the establishment.

Tom was a gangly, dried-up man, looking more world-weary than his thirty-odd years. There was an incongruous delicacy in the way his hands toyed with the shotglass, even as he sat craning himself over a bottle. He displayed just enough poise to hint at his past occupation, though one could see he had been out of commission for a long time as soon as he raised his bleary drunkard's eyes at the two of them.

“Well look who’s decided to come back…”

“Tom, I was just gonna tell you that I’m going to be leaving for far away on a ship, and…”

“Hold up. Hold up…” Tom could barely keep his hand steady as he raised it, bony index finger extended as if what he was about to say was to be a great oration. “You’re not going anywhere today. You’re going to roam and come back at night when you’ve earned enough.”

“But you’re not listening!” Peter took Hook’s hand. “I’m leaving for good. I just came to say good bye and thanks.”

Tom looked at Peter as if he had only just gotten out of bed at an ungodly hour. He finally noticed that the man standing behind his boy was holding him rather possessively, and his face contorted into a lazy anger.

“Pisspot whore! You don’t want him, govn’r, he’s rotten to the core. I should know—that slut’s let me bugger him since our cradle days, not to mention anyone else who is willing to shell out.”

“From what I hear the shelling out all comes to you in the end. I don’t really think it bodes well when a man relies on his punk to provide for him.”

The man was growing redder but was not up to standing up. “You been going around complaining to the authorities?”

“No!” Peter squeezed Hook’s hand harder.

“Who the hell is this? You just plan on abandoning me, after all I’ve done for ya? Why you been staying out for days on end? Been taking hospitality from high-on-up-cultured perverts? Aren’t I good enough for the likes of you anymore?”

“If you weren’t so _wankered_ most times, maybe I’d come home more often!”

Tom suddenly jumped to his feet, knocking over the stool on which he had been seated. Peter was behind Hook quick as lightning. Hook was more than happy to oblige, and Tom stopped short, gazing up and down at the man in front of him trying to estimate whether his social rank and physical size could allow getting into a brawl.

“He’s right, you know.” Hook tossed a shilling to the man, who caught it and stuffed into his pocket without second thoughts. “Get your sorry arse off the stool and get a proper shave before looking for some respectable work.” The two turned to leave, still listening to the drunkard’s vituperation as they navigated their way between the cramped tables of the dingy establishment.

“Sure, you’ve gotten yourself your prize.... Your knob-rot, more likely. Hope you two fuck yourselves into your graves. He’ll throw you out after he’s done playing, too, m’laddo. Cast ya out back in the gutter where you came from. Won’t be sticking up your nose at your friends then, will ya…”

Hook was tempted to turn back, but Peter pulled him forward as soon as he felt the hesitation. “Please, let’s just go. I told him all I wanted to, and we’ve no more business here.”

The crisp cool of the air outside was a welcome change from the reeking heat indoors. The two walked on in awkward silence.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” Peter suddenly said. “About him being horrible to me before. He wasn’t.”

“He used your body and your money… in exchange for what, may I ask?”

“Lodging…”

“You don’t seem to live there much as it is. I think you could do just as well as other city orphans—finding yourself an abandoned attic in those same slums.”

“You don’t understand!” Peter suddenly let go of his new caretaker’s hand. “I wouldn’t have made it this far if Tom hadn’t been there for me… It’s all good while I’m up and about, but sometimes you’re just in a pinch. Like, years ago, there was some old bastard who took it upon himself to exterminate the likes of us. He’d solicit as if he were the commonest Londoner and lead you to his room, where he’d force lye up your ass so as to keep you from practicing further abominations and such. More often than not the mollies died wriggling in pain unimaginable right in his room—and he weren’t ever tried, our profession being illegal."

“And no one was able to give a decent description of the butcher or his lair?”

Peter shook his head. “He was rumored to like to purge the devil out of the young ones best, and it wasn’t long before I met him and got asked. He brought me up to his crabby old room and told me to bend over, just as you did, and I obeyed him to the tee, suspecting nothing at all. But I saw his nasty leather bladder and hose as I looked at him upside down and ran for the door. That was locked, and he tried to catch me, but I slipped by him and threw myself out the window, not caring where I landed so long as he didn’t follow. It was three stories, though not very high ones, and I splintered my leg and collarbone good. I lay crying, asking for help from the passerbies, but my occupation was made plain enough by my nakedness and I couldn’t hope for sympathies. A molly doing his rounds saw me, had pity, and asked where my friends lived. Tom came down and carried me off to the doctor. He spent good money to have it all set and wrapped up. I was lame for two months, it must have been, and he fed me all the while...”

“So he didn’t set you out on the street to collect as a cripple?”

Peter’s cheeks reddened. “And if he did? We had to make ends meet. I didn’t say he was a god-sent angel, ‘sblood! He couldn’t work magic to make money sprout up.”

“Sounds to me as though you’ve been put to good use as long as you’ve lived here. This Tom of yours knew where and when there was profit to be made.”

Peter’s cheeks were afire, chest heaving up and down. “At least he hasn’t sold me off to a whorehouse yet… So long as we’re counting past offenses…” The thin-wristed hand flew up to his mouth as he quickly regretted the words that had escaped his mouth.

“Don’t worry about making accusations, Peter, when they’re well-founded. You have your own past offenses, though I’ll wager you don’t remember them. As for me, I’ve forgiven you long ago.” Peter stood fearful and puzzled, clearly not understanding Hook’s references. Damn the naïve façade of this child, Hook cursed to himself.

“Come.” He offered Peter his hand again. “The ship will take us away from this dreary place and perhaps you’ll forget some of these misfortunes too.”

Peter clutched at Hook’s body. “I’m s--”

“Don’t be,” Hook snapped.

“You’re right, of course, about Tom and everything. What I’ve really been wanting all these years is someone to say more than five words to me before and after the buggering. Tom could talk when he wasn’t plastered and violent…”

“I’ll talk to you, lad. You’ll get sick of my talking yet.”

Peter glanced up adoringly before clutching tighter. How Tom or anyone else could entertain the idea that Peter was an adult in disguise was beyond Hook’s understanding. They stood intertwined, frozen to the spot as passerbies threw them quick, puzzled looks before trudging on.

***

“To a prosperous and safe voyage!” The captain raised his glass of champagne, followed by everyone at the table. The wealthiest passengers had assembled in the great room, which was none too great in size, but still afforded space for the thirty or so people to fit snugly. Hook watched Peter out of the corner of his eye as the first mate explained the course they were going to take to reach Cadiz, almost unable to bear how slowly they promised the merchantman would travel along the coast. He had powdered the boy up to make him presentable, but some of the others still stared at him as he ate his dinner.

When they finally shuffled out of the stuffy room, Hook noticed that one of the sailors was watching them intently. He approached cautiously, examining Peter from the side before finally making up his mind as to the identity and addressing him.

“Pretty Peter!”

Peter seemed to react with instinctual fear if he was recognized by strangers. His head hunched, eyes staring wide at the tall, sinewy young man who was addressing him.

“You don’t remember, I think. Five years… euh…Christmas, in London. We were seven or eight… francais. You remember?”

“Ah…” Peter said softly. It was impossible to tell whether he was blushing or not under the layer of powder. “I think I do.”

“I never forget. Yes, in the old pub. Mais… it’s, how you say," he indicated Peter's diminutive stature while trying to find word in English. "Encore, encore... still pretty like before! Boy, after years. C’est magnifique!”

Hook began to wonder how far they would have to travel to avoid encountering past acquaintances of Peter's, and the French sailor sensed the animosity well enough.

“I know, I know. This man… good, very good. You, euh, earn the big money, no?” He turned to Hook, winking. “He is magnifique. Ass… magnifique. Mouth… magnifique. So pretty. Good Noel we have with him, and he sings good carol when the mouth is not, euh, doing business, you know, as they say?” Hook stepped away before he could be nudged by the laughing sailor's elbow.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Hook said, pulling Peter forward in order to retire for the night. The galley steward was directly behind the reminiscing sailor, who slunk off rapidly as soon as he heard the voice of his superior behind him.

“Sir? This is not your child, is it?”

“Not my son, if that’s you mean,” Hook answered tersely.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to ask full fare for him…” The galley steward said. Hook felt urges to gut these men, and felt emasculated by both the absence of his hook and the staid behavior he had to conform to in efforts to remain unrecognized. He hesitated for only a moment, handing over money without counting it out, guessing his temper would be better served by winking at these small annoyances.

“And,” the man mumbled as he rummaged through the packet of coins. “We don’t want to see him in the mess hall, or anywhere on the deck. It lends the wrong aura to the place…”

Hook’s glare turned so vitriolic that the steward’s hands began to shake. “We shall take our meals in our cabin, but the boy can walk where he pleases especially now that his passage has been so generously funded.”

“But, sir, you must understand… we’re being most lenient about the matter. Truth be told, we should not have allowed him any passage and reported you to the authorities, let alone let him into upper levels…”

“Truth be told, the boy deserves fresh air just as much as anyone else on this sorry vessel. In any case, I wonder that you presume to question the boy’s honor when he, so young and impressionable, is standing here, before you.” Hook felt Peter squeeze himself close.

The steward was trying hard to put on calm airs. “No need for tense talk of this kind, sir…”

“Indeed,” Hook grumbled, pushing past the man, Peter’s hand firmly in his.

He locked the door of the cabin and sat down, full of fiery resentment. He had been risking far too much as it was—being a relatively recent wanted man in England. Yet there were also far too many things that irked him, from the way the captain was conducting business to their plan of navigation, and now complaints about the quality of his travel companion. Peter sat down on the bed, fingers clasped and eyes pointed at the floor, failing to think of a better way to pass the time.

“You can still take meals up there, can’t you?” he finally asked meekly. “If you go without me, I mean.”

Hook looked over and could not help but smile. “What makes you think I want to dine with those pompous old Navy rejects?”

Peter smiled wide, the layer of powder on his face cracking under the duress. Hook had asked for an extra cot, but the ship had none. The bed was nearly big enough for two, and Peter instinctually felt that he should at least offer to do something nice for his savior again.

Hook noticed the change. The boy’s movements became slow and sweeping, his eyes catlike as he partially undressed for bed, contorting himself into obviously uncomfortable poses, to show off a hip or a jawline.

“You can stop playing the strumpet, Pan. Just get into bed and stay on your side.” 

Peter’s face paled. “I didn’t mean… not to use me… but wouldn’t you like to have a looksee? I’m very good at shows, I was trained at the brothel, back in the day...”

Peter trailed off when Hook shook his head, smiling wistfully. The man approached the bed and embraced Peter stroking his hair. “No more whoring. It’s not who you are, and I don’t want to see you keep putting on the masquerade for me. Unless you want to keep serving 'seven or eight francais'?”

Peter shook his head and hugged Hook's torso in reciprocation. Hook suddenly felt something hard and irregular between his and Peter’s chests. He reached into the clothes without a second thought, pulling out a spoon. 

Peter cowered at once and began babbling something about how he was going to return it until Hook asked to have everything else concealed in his outfit. Peter quickly relinquished an entire collection of items he had managed to pilfer off the table, including napkin rings and several people’s silverware. Hook could not contain his disgust and finally spanked the child with three rather violent strokes.

“Only giving them proof that their haughty judgment of you was well-founded. Quit whoring-- quit stealing-- and, most of all, quit lying!”

“Yes, sir!” Peter sobbed, still clutching at the foreshortened arm that had held him put.

“And don’t ‘yes sir’ me. It all stops right now. Put everything that’s happened behind you and just return to being a respectable human being.”

“I can’t make out what it is you want me to do, is all… I'm not used to just doing nothing,” Peter said shakily, teary eyes finally coming up to meet Hook’s. “And, besides... it’s not as if you haven’t made a living out of stealing.”

Hook grinned. _There_ was the glimmer of the boy he was trying to disinter from the sordid muck. “Firstly, yes, I’ve made a good living, and I find it an insult that you feel compelled to steal when I have promised to provide you with everything. Secondly, I am not a pirate, never was, never will be, and being a respectable gentleman I advise you never to mention that rumor to anyone again.”

It took Peter a moment to relax and join Hook in grinning. 

He watched Hook strip down to his breeches, absentmindedly sitting down on the chair. Hook turned at the sound of a sharp hiss of pain to see Peter’s face contorted.

“Did I… hurt you badly?” Hook asked, cursing himself for forgetting that spanking may have been a particularly cruel punishment for the boy. Peter forced a smile and shook his head, eyes squeezing shut as he raised himself up and walked over to the other side of the bed.

“Nah, it’s just flaring up, I guess. I get it often when I’m in jitters.”

“There’s nothing to worry about… why are you in jitters?”

“Oh, no, nothing at all. Thanks for everything. Just a bit frightful to venture out. I don’t remember anything outside of London much.”

“Well, I assure you you’ll like your new home better.”

“Yes, I know. My body is just being naughty.”

“The dragon?”

“Yes.” Peter laughed.

He climbed into bed, moving as close as possible to the edge, facing outwards. Part of him hoped Hook would turn to him and fondle his body. He knew how to work with people of that persuasion. Yet he only felt the bed dip and nothing else. The man was facing outwards as well, Peter discovered when he got up the courage to look over. No person would believe how chastely he was living under Hook's auspices even if they were told. Peter fell asleep, ignoring the mounting burning sensations in his body.

 _Put it all behind me_ …


	3. Chapter 3

Hook groaned, feeling an urge to vomit for the umpteenth time in the past hour. Where was the damn boy? He had very graciously offered to shuttle back and forth with the bedpan to remove the stench of vomit as quickly as possible from their cabin, but was now nowhere to be found when his services were needed most.

The captain had laughed good-naturedly at the boy when the latter began vomiting frequently early in the voyage, reminding him how he had begged to be taken on as cabin boy though the slightest bit of rough sea apparently made him ill. Soon it became apparent that it was no seasickness that afflicted Peter with such severity, however, especially when reports of dysentery aboard the vessel began to be rampant. Not only was Peter unable to keep anything down, but all his other afflictions also quit their dormant state. Hook tended to the boy, contending with both vomiting and severe runs, as well as frightening blisters and sores on the two regions involved.

Hook was amazed by the boy’s stoic lack of complaints and tears about what was obviously a very painful experience. Peter frequently expressed regret about making his caretaker deal with such foul material, and never asked for more than the bedpan and an occasional drink. Lying on his back made Peter feel more nauseous than sitting upright, so Hook often held him in his lap, the boy’s body leaning onto his own. His head just below Hook's. The man had regaled him with stories most of the time, finally venturing to tell him about the boy called Peter Pan who resided in Neverland, carefully omitting mention of his pirate nemesis but including everything else he could recall about the boy’s former glory. Peter lay listening very intently, and Hook was sure that his memory was being triggered. When he finished Peter leaned back to gaze at Hook’s face, no doubt digesting some of the story’s elements in his mind, but the product of all this contemplation was only a request for another story that featured him as a main character, preferably involving dragons.

The boy had all but recovered in a few days, by which time Hook founded himself doubling over quite often. He knew the boy was more than happy to return the favor, and soon saw the pleasures in having Peter dote on him and run back and forth for all his needs. Yet where was he now? An uncomfortable gurgle in his stomach finally prompted Hook to get up and risk trekking to the head of the ship.

Just as he was getting ready to lean down and retrieve his boots while trying not to lose the contents of his stomach, the door creaked open. Peter slinked in, eyes averted to the floor, and made his way to the bed to lie down and face away from Hook.

“What took you so long?”

“Oh, I just got stopped to talk to someone.”

“Talk to someone? And I suppose you simply lost the bedpan on the way?”

Peter jerked up from the bed. “I’ll get it, I must have forgot…”

“Stay,” Hook commanded. “Turn around and stop hiding. Now, if you think I didn’t notice the way you walked in here, you are gravely mistaken.”

“Well, alright.” Peter sighed. “I got buggered. You’re happy now, I ‘spect?”

“Oh, ecstatic.” It was easier to ignore his discomfort when he was irritated by something else. “I suppose you’ll just have to tell me who it was so that I may send my proper regards.”

“Please don’t… Once a whore, I’ll always be a whore. They don’t know that I’ve decided to stop. It’s only natural, on their part…”

“They? So this was a veritable gathering, was it?”

“No, only two. Please, let’s just forget about it, and I’ll just go fetch the bedpan…”

“So let me venture a guess.” Hook’s voice pinned Peter in place. “They took you from fore and aft at the same time?”

Peter eyes fled to the side. “Yes…” He swallowed hard, deciding to get the interrogation over with as quickly as possible. “Twice, for each to sample both. But it isn’t as though they hadn’t used sheaths! Good cow bladder stock and newly washed too…”

“Washed in saltwater?” Hook sighed in disgust when Peter nodded. “That must be very pleasant for you, isn’t it, with your open sores. Not to mention that you must have liked getting a taste of your own ass the second time around… Just in case your throat and bowels don’t already share every single affliction.”

Tears were falling down Peter’s face very quickly by this time. “Why’re you being so cruel? It’s not as if I wanted to be doing that with them…”

“Ah, there. That’s what I wanted to hear from you. No more ‘always a whore’ and it being ‘natural.’ They treat you like garbage and they’ll get their due once you describe them to me. But as for you, don’t ever start thinking you wanted something that was forced on you.”

Peter’s face remained morose. “Easy for you to be preaching like that. You’re treating me as though it were the first time. At least these men were acting half-decent and paid me good money for my troubles,” he said, pulling out two schillings.

“Give me those!” Hook snatched them out of Peter’s outstretched hand. Armed with the information that it had been Peter’s old French acquaintance and some stout, close friend of his with a goatee, he strode out of the cabin into the pitch darkness-- queasiness hardly hampering his sense of purpose in this instance. Peter lay back down onto the bed, heart pounding.

The next morning he woke to find the captain next to him, hand entwined in Peter’s hair, mouth and nose pressed into the delicate brow. Peter ran his hand along Hook’s chest, wondering whether the captain had fallen asleep in that position or only shifted in his sleep into this proximity. He left the pleasant warmth of the bed to travel over to the head. The previous night’s uncomfortable cross-examination rushed back into memory when he saw a frenetic crowd gathered around something he could not see until he squeezed through to the front.

His two customers lay dead, necks rather obviously broken. The surgeon’s assistant had been cutting them up for a cursory autopsy since the murders appeared so strange and unnatural. Peter could hardly contain his fear when a man standing beside him related how a schilling was found in the stomach of each man, crossing himself many times over but still obviously excited to be witness to what would surely become legend and rumor in many ports.

When Peter returned to the cabin, Hook was already up and about. He smirked at the boy’s pallor. “Well if you’re going to say something, you might as well go on and say it…”

Peter shook his head frantically, but the words began spilling out in spite of himself, voice progressively rising as his fear was converted to outrage.

“Are you mad? Whadja have to go and do that for? They didn’t do anything to be deserving of a fate like that!”

“Kindly lower your voice. These walls are not impermeable.” Peter was not to be calmed, however. He trembled and fussed about what a heinous crime murder was and how could Hook do such a thing on a ship where there could be relatively few suspects, until Hook finally cornered him and pushed him into a wall of the cabin with his foreshortened forearm, clapping the boy’s mouth shut through a handkerchief. Peter felt frighteningly thin and fragile when the larger body pinned him like that, but he also thought he recognized something like lust in Hook’s eyes. He fluttered his eyelids, casting his eyes down seductively, his body growing limp. Where physical strength failed him, it was always easiest to seduce and distract.

“No more screaming and yelling nonsense, understand? Nothing terrible has happened, and we are headed for Italy just as we planned.” He felt an urge to kiss the boy just then, if only on his forehead, but refrained and simply released Peter’s body from the wall.

“It’s just that,” the boy stammered. “A quarter of London should be murdered then, for greater offenses…”

“Perhaps they should,” Hook said. “I’m only concerned with those that would harm you.”

Peter startled when there was a knock on the door, breathing again only when Hook turned to the room carrying the breakfast tray. He didn’t know whether to be proud of meriting such ruthless retribution or frightened of the man with whom he had agreed to take up quarters. Most of all he tried to avoid imagining what had happened before the men met their end, given the evidence of struggle and that they were made to swallow the money.

He also had a sense of disappointment that Hook never seemed to pull through on any questionable advances. It was a rare thing for Peter to be genuinely attracted, but the more he watched the man across the table stare at him with those cat-like blue eyes, the more he wished he’d be thrown on the bed and ravished in some way, even if it hurt considerably. The murders were disturbing mostly because they made him feel strangely excited, Peter realized. The gruesome incident recalled something pleasant from his blurry past-- a love of blood and carnage, and a sense of carefree fun about them. 

Yes, he would have done it for free with a man of Hook’s caliber, he thought to himself as he picked at the yolk on his plate and watched its contents spill across to drench everything else in yellow.

***

Hook decided to get the worst over with first, and bring Peter to a famous doctor in Palermo before heading off to his countryside estate. “Countryside” evidently meant little to Peter, who kept asking where Hook’s apartment was in the city. He was more dazzled by how sunny and warm a city could be, even in winter, than by the pompous architecture and sculptures in the squares through which they passed.

When they finally arrived at the correct address, Peter made to protest, having had some less than agreeable experiences with doctors, but Hook pushed him up the winding staircase and into the patients' room. The doctor was an aged man and looked kindly enough to have Peter comply to all his directions, mostly given as hand gestures accompanied by English intermixed with Italian. After a cursory examination of the inside of his mouth, the doctor uncovered a sinister-looking device that reminded the captain more of a rack than anything else. Hook watched as the doctor strapped Peter’s legs into the birthing-stool-like contraption. The boy was evidently distressed but not particularly ashamed, chest rising and falling frantically as he was turned almost upside down exposing his private parts for easy scrutiny.

The doctor turned his head this way and that, stroking his beard. “ _È il vostro figlio_?”

“Figlio?” Hook struggled to remember, biting his lip, wondering whether the doctor was speaking standard Italian or the local dialect.

“ _No_ ,” Peter suddenly answered. He turned his head to Hook, growing red from the uncomfortable position, or perhaps a belated sense of his decency being violated by someone who wasn’t going to make use of his services. “I think he’s asking if I’m your son.”

“Ah.” Hook was impressed, though more by the international character of London sleaze than any aptitude Peter might have possessed.

“Parli italiano?” The doctor asked, amused, and he and Peter began carrying on a rather broken conversation, each trying to speak the other’s tongue but constantly inserting his own as a crutch. Hook coughed impatiently when he saw that the doctor was hardly doing anything else, prompting the old man to rush back into action and insert what looked like an oiled, tall narrow glass right up Peter’s opening. The boy arched off the chair, its metal rattling erratically, while the doctor examined his insides, recruiting Hook to help keep the boy’s lower half still. Hook sneaked a peek out of morbid curiosity, and even his untrained eye could discern small bloody lesions on the bright pink lining inside when held to the light.

“Please don’t look!” Peter begged, obviously mortified.

“I think he’s in pain,” Hook advised the doctor, who only looked at him blankly. “Uh.. _Dolore, DOLORE_!” Hook added in exasperation.

“Sì, sì.” The doctor took out the instrument carefully. “The boy needs… _clistere_.”

“What?” Hook and Peter asked in unison, though with different degrees of anxiety. 

“ _Clistere, clistere_ ,” the doctor repeated as though that would clarify anything. By and by, Hook slowly deciphered that the doctor was recommending a thorough enema, but that he was unwilling to sully his instruments for that with such an infectious body. Hook left the building shaking his head, going along city streets in search of the apparatus the doctor required, resentful of being made to run errands. 

Peter was exceedingly nervous and began to cry at the sight of the apparatus when Hook returned. The captain assured him his fears were unfounded, reminding him that, even to his knowledge, the brothel made the top-tier whores cleanse themselves out between customers if they were to have several a night. Peter watched intently as the doctor heated the silver colloid solution he wanted administer before pouring it into the bladder. Hook promised him that he would barely feel a thing, and might even find it pleasant to be cleaned out so thoroughly, so Peter took in the porcelain nozzle with professional ease. Yet as soon as the bag was raised and he felt the liquid pouring into him, the silver colloid began to feel as if it was burning him up from the inside out. Peter screamed and bawled and protested until Hook was forced to secure his arms with leather straps as well. The doctor motioned with his head, suggesting the captain could spare himself the sight, and Hook took full advantage despite the boy’s desperate cries not to be left alone. He shut the door, listening as the muffled screams slowly faded, and was content to remain outside until the doctor had finished the procedure and Peter himself hobbled out, fully dressed but his hair mussed and his face swollen with tears.

It was Hook’s turn to stay inside with the doctor, as the latter enumerated the host of conditions he had identified in the unfortunate boy. This was greatly aided by the use of medical textbooks, through which Hook gathered that, in addition to having just about every named venereal disease, the boy also had many other conditions in their incipient stages like rickets, scurvy, and, most strange of all to the doctor-- mild cataracts. The doctor made it clear that he was vastly interested in Peter’s case as one of very aggressive development of many diseases that would usually take longer than he had obviously lived to even take root. Hook brushed the doctor’s questions aside, and made him write out a detailed prescription to get the boy back up on his feet as soon as possible. After writing out a complete regimen with as much English as he could muster, the doctor made his final pronouncement—the boy might get better, but he would only give him a maximum of another year to live, given his present afflictions. In any case, the doctor vehemently cautioned Hook against pursuing his “relationship” with the boy any longer, even offering to take a quick look and see if any of the diseases had managed to spread to him.

Hook walked out woodenly, wondering if Peter could eavesdrop as effectively on their hushed tones as he on the boy’s hysterics. He took up Peter’s aching body and carried him out, reassuring himself that the gloomy prognosis would only apply if Peter Pan were an ordinary mortal.


	4. Chapter 4

_The brat was growing more arrogant,_ Hook noted. He was surprised at how long Peter had stayed silent on the ride out to the countryside. It was a protest against having been forced to endure all that humiliation and pain, Hook guessed, meeting the boy’s bitter gaze. Or perhaps being left alone with the doctor after all those screams for Hook to stay by his side. In any case, it was not his concern if Peter didn’t understand what was good for him. 

Hook glared out the window, determined to avoid perusing the boy’s features. There was no need, he felt, to delve into the intricacies of silly resentment. The road was rough, and they were certainly not moving very quickly. Hook was slightly annoyed that the driver was very likely to demand more payment for the journey back, especially when there would be no passengers to return with to the city from that rustic area.

Though Hook could see Peter was impressed with his property when they finally reached it, the boy did not deign to say a word, still glum, and still awkward and pained in his gait as he walked up the short path to the door. The housekeeper looked at him with puzzlement and slight disapproval as he gimped across the threshold of the villa. Hook retired him to a small guestroom he had assigned to him, and left for downstairs to see how everything had been managed in his long absence.

Peter couldn’t help but marvel at how beautiful and ornamental the things inside the house were—things he couldn’t even begin to name. He stood, drinking in the sight, suppressing compulsive urges to try to swipe anything and everything that wasn’t directly attached to the walls. He stared out his window at the rolling fields that stretched on and on as far as his eye could see from this vantage point. Clumps of woods were somewhere far in the distance, and if Peter situated himself at the extreme right of the window, pressing his nose into the glass, he could see the seashore not very far off. The great blue expanse was a far cry from the dank water of the Thames, which he thought he knew and loved.

He felt rather silly now, for having begun the game of silence with Hook. Hunger was beginning to gnaw at his insides, but he didn’t know whether it was acceptable for him to come out of his room, especially after his behavior toward his host. Camille, the morose housekeeper, came in, skin wizened up like a raisin, glaring with her beady eyes at him as she went about dusting the room that had been more or less neglected before. Peter sat on the bed, blushing when his stomach growled loudly enough for her to turn around.

The game didn’t last long however. Hook came in as if he had forgotten the rude behavior towards him. Peter knew he hadn’t and apologized profusely, partly because he wanted to eat something before going to bed, and partly because Hook had shown him nothing but kindness, really.

Kindness was a tricky word, however. The regimen the doctor had prescribed was brutal, and Hook was rather disgusted by many parts of it yet performed it all himself. The mouth cleanings had to be performed several times daily, with tonics so nasty their sickly aromas made Hook retch while he was administering them. Peter cried when it was time to drink the cinnabar, and more often than not simply vomited it up minutes after drinking it. For his skin ailments, Peter rubbed in the ointments himself, under Hook’s supervision and then sat shuddering, begging to be allowed to wash off the caustic substances. Yet despite both of their misgivings, Peter was soon on the mend. Hook dropped some of the more vile parts of their routine, and Peter in turn stopped protesting even the most painful of the remaining treatments. 

Hook encouraged him to spend as much time as possible outside, and Peter had soon scoured out the entire territory of Hook’s domain. It was a small estate, and did not produce much crop besides that which was used for the table, but quite large enough for Peter to amuse himself with. He soon befriended everyone from the cook and the keeper of the stables to the rustic tenant farmers living on the outskirts and tilling the fields. Only Camille refused to come around as easily, but she took a special pride in being obstinate and contrary to the rest of the household.

Spring was full underway by the time Hook took Peter to the doctor again, asking if it was possible to reduce the stringency of the regimen now that the boy was outwardly in practically perfect health. To Hook’s surprise, the doctor remembered them extremely well, greeting them like long-lost relatives. He was all too eager to examine Peter very thoroughly, still amazed by the light cataracts, but Hook kept his grip firmly on Peter’s wrist throughout the visit. 

The doctor also advised Hook to make use of a prosthesis that was all the rage nowadays—some improvement on Paré’s design. Hook bought it and entertained Peter the whole ride home with his metal hand. The prosthesis had been cheap though, and one of the springs popped itself before they even arrived back. Granted, Peter had been abusing it, pulling on its fingers, trying to bend them into grotesque configurations. He sat sheepishly as Hook tried to fix it and then gave up on it. The boy was so worried, Hook wondered how he would feel if he knew how much all his medicines cost.

He nearly dropped the box containing the lot of them when Peter quietly apologized for ‘ruining his hand.’ How different this child was from his terrible incarnation that reigned supreme on that desolate island, and the one which he could not even remember nowadays. He couldn't stand Peter being servile, but neither could he bear the thought of that arrogance being resurrected. It was a narrow road he was trekking with this child.

As if to celebrate Peter’s return from that journey, the ducklings living in the small lake on Hook’s property suddenly hatched. Peter could spend all day running around the pond, feeding and watching the birds that lived in it. He finally disobeyed Hook and brought one small fuzzy chick to his room, only to be rather heartily spanked when he was found out. Yet Peter’s initial worries about being thrown out for bad behavior were quickly being dissipated. He was growing secure in the knowledge that as long as Hook lived he would enjoy this carefree lifestyle. ‘As long as Hook lived,’ bothered the boy a bit, and he had learned better than ignore the future while living in comfort, but his plans were straightforward.

He was growing proficient in Italian more quickly than Hook. His body looked untouched, though the doctor had repeatedly stressed that he would alwas remain somewhat infectious. All in all, he had few qualms about finding employment in Palermo should something happen to his host. He only suffered from lack of practice in his trade, feeling his muscles growing stiffer and wished he had access to a proper dildo like the one the brothel keeper had trained him with in his very early days in the trade. He dared not ask Hook for something like that, and practiced only with fingers, trying to regain full voluntary control of his clench.

With his skin cleared, Peter found that Hook was also growing less careful with avoiding touching him during the administration of the treatments, though never anywhere near the extent Peter might have liked. As he lay naked on his bed in the dead of night, teasing himself under pretext of practicing, he fantasized about Hook coming into the room suddenly. How angry he’d be. He would most definitely spank him on his bare bottom and then punish him by giving him the stuffing of his life. The bed would rattle and Peter would scream as heat lanced through him. So would Hook, his hot tears falling right on Peter’s back because the fit would just be so tight and perfect…

The fantasies were becoming more frequent and almost urgent in nature as he got better.

***

He rocked back a little against Hook’s hand, willing his muscles to spasm. Hook felt it, and stared at the boy in front of him—the kid was raising his ass up from the bed with his knees, shamelessly trying to turn an enema into something titillating.

"If you're going to play around, you can do it yourself," Hook's voice boomed behind Peter. The boy stiffened and tried to recall what it was that he had just been doing while lost in his reverie. The porcelain nozzle he had probably been squeezing out slid into him, and he obediently gripped it into place. Healed up, Peter practically liked the feeling before the liquid would start to flow into him, and lately even this discomfort he had grown accustomed to. Perhaps it hurt less because there were no open lesions anymore. His face was certainly clearer-- hardly any signs of the open wounds from before remained.

Peter jolted forward when he felt the water finally pouring in.

"Too hot?" Hook asked, lowering the bladder for a moment. Having someone be concerned about you was bliss, Peter was beginning to notice.

"No, just peachy." He heard Hook fasten the bag onto the latch and prayed the large, coarse hand would now be free to do more pleasant things. He smiled and closed his eyes when he felt the palm-- so comfortingly familiar now-- press itself gently against his slowly expanding belly. He sighed his pleasure into the pillow below his face. It was pleasure that overshadowed his discomfort from being bloated. To be touched with affection was even higher bliss, there was no question about it.

"I think you're getting well enough that you don't even need these every _week_ ," Hook said, his hand brushing ever so lightly, almost haphazardly, against Peter's thigh, which was quivering from both light pain and eagerness to be caressed. Peter nodded quickly, though he rather liked some of the treatments. The magnesium salt bath for his whole body, for example, felt very good-- he appreciated the feeling of being constantly clean, and though the water tingled, it was nothing to the silver colloid rinses of his insides. Sitting in the warm water with Hook’s eyes roaming over his naked figure was perhaps best of all. 

The nozzle slid out and Peter quickly ran into the small adjoining room, grateful that the outhouse was not his only option in the sumptuous villa.

Hook smirked when he saw the boy wait for him to leave, desperation in his eyes.

“I’m glad to see you’re ashamed of something these days,” the captain remarked with good humor when he returned a short time later to find Peter still dressing. 

“I wouldn’t mind you staying much, to tell you the truth. I just think you’re too high on up cultured to like that sport. Although…” Peter trailed off, too lost in thought to continue either dressing or talking.

Hook sat down in the armchair, leaning onto one side in true decadent fashion, waiting for the boy to gather his thoughts. Though he wasn’t sure about how healthy it was to harbor and recall the memories Peter seemed to, he thought it was healthier to remember than have those awful lapses. Perhaps he’d recover some parts of his former life if given practice.

“There was one gentleman,” the boy finally picked up. “Rich, with a wife and a reputation. Wouldn’t touch me if I’d paid him, dirty whore that I was, but he did like to watch me take a shit onto a silver platter of his, right in his office.”

Hook grimaced. “A veritable pervert, then?”

“Well, might’ve been. But the easiest job I had in any case. And when he learned that giving me money meant I’d be robbed of it or pass it on to Tom instead of eating my wages, he started to feed me instead of paying. Sumptuous meals he had, I thought, and felt like a bloomin’ prince. Still nothing to the food here, but to my mind then… I’d known no better. So I’d stuff myself and then we’d wait a little while for my bowels to work. At first I was a bit ashamed, and wouldn’t let him see my face as I was at it. But by the end, I’d mastered it and could even pull it off with a certain, you know, grace!…”

“Spare me the gruesome details, I beg you.” 

But Hook was laughing, so Peter placed himself on the arm of the chair Hook was sitting on and continued with his story’s more proper sections, energy building from a receptive audience. “His wife drops in to see him at his office one day after work. She’d been suspicious of him staying late so often. So she walks in, and I’m right dab in the middle of it, on his desk, a knee on either side of the silver platter, moaning ‘sif I were having the time of my life, and he with front row seats to my ass, wanking off like no tomorrow.”

“So, what happened… dare I ask?” Hook was still trying hard to suppress his laughter, and Peter was beginning to feel riled up. What wouldn’t he give to be in that compromising position on Hook’s desk right now…

“Oh, she did throw a scene, that woman. When I’d quickly gotten myself decent-- meaning to get out before more trouble started-- she decided to give me a beating I was supposed to remember for ages to come. And then she finds her frail gentlewoman’s hand doesn’t do the damage she’s looking for, so she takes to beating me with her parasol. And he all the while running after the both of us, shouting ‘Dearest! Dearest, put it down!’”

“Shh.” Hook snatched Peter into his lap, clapping his hand over the boy’s mouth. Those lesions on his face really must have healed, Peter realized, reaching out his tongue to lick at the palm suppressing his giggles. He pretended he was trying to get free, squirming methodically to rub himself against the captain’s body as much as possible. 

“Don’t yell while you’re telling me something. You’ll wake the whole household.” Hook’s voice hitched and his body stiffened against the close contact he himself arranged. 

“So you’ve been enlightening me quite some time about every which perversion you’ve come across in London scum and gentry, but this hardly surprises me. What did _you_ enjoy doing, is what I’d like to know.” The captain’s hand freed Peter’s mouth. 

“Enjoy?” the boy asked, hardly sobered from his excitement before.

“Yes. Were there some customers you enjoyed servicing?”

“The ones who didn’t beat me?” Peter ventured. “I’m no whore at heart, so I enjoyed none of it… sir. I assure you.”

“Really. Are you saying that only to please me?”

“But of course.” Peter grinned and ran his hand provocatively across Hook’s silk cravat.

“I think it’s best we find you a hobby before you grow too bored,” Hook said, taking the boy’s hand away. “And for myself too, perhaps.”

Peter felt his heart race at the grip around his wrist. The captain had the spirit. All he required was the impetus. He’d be broken down eventually. Peter smiled at his private thoughts, lowering his eyes to admire his new outfit for the thousandth time. 

“Oh yes, hobbies are quite nice.” He just caught Hook staring down at his thighs when he brought his eyes back up. Hook quickly looked away. 

Things were progressing nicely, Peter mused, crossing his legs so that one knee deliberately dug into the captain’s torso, and unbalanced himself enough to feel Hook’s hand come up to safeguard him from falling. He did not recall ever having been so happy.

***

Peter found he and Hook had very different notions of hobbies. At the very least, he had hoped to share them, but it had turned out quite the opposite. At least Hook watched as he learned to fence, Peter consoled himself, and his heart swelled with pride when the instructor praised his uncanny natural feel for a sword. His only fault was concentration, as he kept turning to see whether those blue forget-me-nots were still fixed on him when he was at his exercises. Hook simply nodded when the other man would comment on the boy’s aptitude, gazing off beyond them into a long-gone past. He was only brought back to the here and now at the end of the lesson, when Peter came toward him and whipped the sword out in only half-serious _en garde_ stance. Hook’s foreshortened arm jerked and his countenance changed so much that both Peter’s hand and smile immediately sank down in fear.

“Never point swords at me, Pan.” Hook said with no hint of his usual sense of humor. Peter nodded, surprised but hardly resisting the spanking he received for his apparently grievous offense.

The same day Hook ventured out somewhere and brought back two young women in the evening. He had been looking for some innocent, empty-headed country girls from the neighborhood, but happened upon two who were visiting the countryside and seeking to escape their cramped living conditions in Palermo.

They were giggly, mischievous, and youthful, and though Hook barely bothered to learn their names and distinguish them—Florentina was taller than Celeste, or had it been the other way around?—he was sure they would provide him with something he had neglected for far too long. They also had a smattering of French and even English, priding themselves on their cosmopolitanism.

Peter understood the situation well enough as soon as he beheld them, and Hook was sure he caught a look of disappointment in the boy. But Peter didn’t fail to be polite and played along convincingly, inventing realistic details about how he became orphaned and came under Hook’s guardianship because he was some obscure relative. The women fell absolutely in love with the idea of something so romantic and altruistic, and to Hook’s bemusement became rather enthralled with the boy, doting on him and prattling on only half-fluent nonsense.

Hook coughed and they finally tore themselves away to head upstairs. There was an unmistakably great sadness in Peter’s eyes, but Hook chose to ignore it, bidding the boy put himself to bed at a reasonable hour as he mounted the stairs, the girls rustling in front of him with their long, elegant dresses. 

He had rescued Peter, cured him of many ailments, and would provide him with lodging-- even opulent lodging. He had no further obligation to hover over the silly boy and satisfy his less than subtle demands for inappropriate intimacy. Tumbling among the sheets, he was finding the girls did not disappoint, but the sad boy downstairs haunted his thoughts as if to spite him. Peter Pan somehow managed to obsess him in any setting, it seemed.

Peter heard the laughter coming from Hook’s bedchamber and crept upstairs, slowly enough to produce only the lightest creaking—surely not to be heard inside the loud room. He lowered himself to his knees, finding that the keyhole afforded a marvelous view of most of the room, and, most importantly, the bed. He watched intently—every movement the girls made, every gesture and grimace was under scrutiny to see what elicited the best reactions from Hook. Whatever it was that distinguished their methods from his was either very understated or nonexistent. Hook had often complained about Peter’s vulgarity, but these girls were speaking of things that made Peter blush. Hook had claimed he was easily disgusted by lewd behavior, but they were unashamedly naked and doing things that Peter judged did not put them in the most advantageous light. And these were not sophisticated temptresses, he realized in surprise. In fact, there was something decidedly amateur and childish in the way they laughed at strangely inappropriate moments and ran about the room in only their drawers thinking a game of tag to be the height of titillation. 

He might have been happy in this discovery that it was not his skills which were to blame, but watching where Hook’s hand went left Peter with the realization that an ample bosom and bottom were very important to earning any love under this roof. He finally began to feel inadvertent excitement when Hook thrust into one, then the other not so long after. The excitement built like it hadn’t in the entirety of his memory—perhaps because he had never before watched without the expectation of getting his own turn all too soon. 

Hook promised the girls new dresses laid out in the downstairs salon, and they ran off squealing with delight, Peter quickly slinking off before they’d opened the door. He was going to do as he’d been told and go off to bed, but his desire to be touched was too great and he soon returned to knock on Hook’s door. If anything, it was a matter of principle now, to prove to himself that he hadn’t lost his art. His heart began to race when he was bidden to come in without so much as a shuffle to get dressed. Indeed, Hook was half-sitting up in bed, nude, hair loose and wild over his shoulders. He was covered to his chest only with a sheet, the smell of sex hanging heavy in the air.

Much as Peter wished to ask for what he really wanted upfront, he dared not. Hook was a man to be dealt with delicately.

“I’m feeling a little sick,” he said quietly, hoping the women would not return too quickly. “I think I need…” He longed to say bath, but he was fairly sure Hook would not stay with him for that. Sacrifices had to be made. “… an enema.”

Hook raised his eyebrows, although the rest of his face betrayed that he didn’t really believe the boy. “I’m sorry to hear that, lad. Have Camille do it then.”

“But!” Peter couldn’t help feeling his ruse was becoming more transparent with each passing moment. “She… she’s never done it before. She doesn’t know how to do it, proper-like…”

“Well, instruct her. I’m sure she won’t bungle it up. Or if she’s busy, I imagine you could do it yourself.”

Peter crimsoned and promised to try it later, both knowing that ‘later’ signified an indefinitely large period of time.

He passed Celeste and Florentina on his way down the stairs, the two girls still quite pleased with their expensive new gowns. They kissed the boy they believed to be theirs, and he cherished these affections well enough, though he never let their lips near his own. The last thing he wanted was to pass on his afflictions to the captain. He pitied the girls too. They were so healthy, and happy, and pleasing to Hook.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cinnabar is a mercury compound used to treat syphilis  
> Ambroise Pare invented the Petit Lorraine which was the first advanced prosthesis  
> Coprophilia appears to have gained sudden, momentary popularity at the beginning of the 18th century


	5. Chapter 5

Hook awoke to late afternoon sunlight, finding both the girls and their garments gone. _Perhaps I’m growing too old for these games,_ he thought wistfully as he brought himself to order, feeling rather drained by the activity of the last few days. He headed downstairs to the salon from which he could hear the soft laughter and leisurely conversation of women, rather embarrassed to have fallen asleep in the middle of the day.

“I’m out-playing them in checkers, captain!” Peter’s gleeful voice sounded out as soon as Hook entered the room. The boy was kneeling on the chair, which he swung back and forth with only two legs planted on the lacquered floor. He was leaning on the table over the game board. The two girls sat opposite him, giggling and fanning themselves. Losing miserably too, Hook noted as soon as he looked at the board. 

“I’ve been watching them play and learned the rules well enough without them explaining or anything…” Peter continued excitedly, fading away when Hook walked across to the other side and displaced Florentina from her chair, only to have her reseat herself onto his lap. “I don’t think I can play you, captain. It’s not right, somehow.”

“Sit back down,” Hook commanded with sudden acerbity that shocked Peter though he dared not show it. “What, afraid to lose?”

“No.” Peter tried to smile. “Afraid of winning. It’s not good practice to beat your host, dontcha think?”

“We shall see,” Hook said and proceeded to play. The women booed whenever Hook managed to further improve on the bleak legacy they had left his side. Peter was trying very hard not to notice how Hook’s hand held Florentina’s body close. He smiled amiably, though his eyes betrayed rather intense distress as they watched the playful flirting of the girls.

His last piece eaten, Peter stared at the girls in Hook’s arms. “I guess I’m no good at these sort of games after all,” he said, forcing a smile and leaving the table to go up to his room. 

“You horrible man. Why make bad feeling about the silly things like this.”

“Don’t think we were not playing on rules with you and make you win,” Celeste added helpfully, addressing Peter, and letting out a giggle when Hook pinched her bottom.

“Not _those_ games either,” Peter said quietly as he mounted the stairs.

“Why don’t you spend more time outside, Pan. Go and soak up some sunlight. Go and play with those neighborhood children that cause such a racket early in the morning. They trespass on our property all the time anyway.”

“I an’t a child! You of all people should know that, eh?” Peter didn’t care who heard him at this point.

“Fine, don’t befriend them. Just go outside and stop sulking all day. It disgusts me.”

At this, Peter’s eyes opened wide in surprise, arms falling limply at his sides. He swallowed hard. “I don’t wanna disgust you… You’ve given me so much, and--”

“Peter is not sulky!” Celeste cried, though she was not at all sure she was catching the entire drift of the conversation. 

“Not sulky when you and Peter isn’t together here,” Florentina chimed in.

“Ladies, please--” 

“Thank you, Flora and Celeste. But I’m going to go upstairs. Because I can’t understand why you want to mold me ‘sif I were a child when it’s so plain that you hate children.” He quickly made his way upstairs, hearing indecipherable talk in the salon, but judging easily enough that it was verging on bickering by the tones. At least the women stood up for him. Soon, however, he heard three pairs of feet go up the stairs and retire into the next room.

 _Again?!_ Peter thought in dismay, sitting on his bed hugging his knees and listening, not deigning to raise his head from his knees when the housekeeper walked into his room.

“I know why you’re sad,” Camille said in her coarse Italian. She was sweeping, and Peter absentmindedly raised his feet off the floor for her. “I know your secrets. You’re a little prostitute. You don’t think I’ve forgotten those blisters you came in with. Shame… shame on the likes of you.”

“I needed the money, you old witch, and I was sold into it, so shut up.”

She fumed, and she was rather funny when she fumed. Almost funny enough to ignore the cries of ecstasy behind the wall. Suddenly she raised the broom to strike him, but thought better of it before swinging.

“Afraid of the master then, eh?” Peter got up, making to leave.

“You deserve it. You liked it, little strumpet. I know your kind. You burn in hell later.”

“I’ll see you there, then, along with your mean tongue,” he declared in triumphant English. It was impossible to tell what she had understood of that, if anything, but the tone alone was enough. He ducked from the swipe of her broom and bolted out with her in hot pursuit until they reached the railing and he slid down, leaving her huffing and puffing at the top. The bubbling sense of fun reminded him of something long ago and he felt like a child more than ever before. 

Peter stuck out his tongue and raced outside to try the advice he had so disdained earlier.

He returned so late that Hook had begun to worry and contemplate sending someone out for him. The boy was drunk with happiness and power when he strutted into the salon, informing everyone present that he had subordinated the entire group of boys in the area, despite his limited Italian, and had been ordering them about in efforts to orchestrate a grand-scale raid of the neighboring pear orchard. He threw the pears down on the table as if he had returned from the hunt, saving one in his hand and surprising everyone when he ran over to Camille with it.

“Camille, my favorite housekeeper!” he shouted, smiling a lopsided smirk Hook hadn’t seen since the boy’s capture, many decades ago. He threw his arms around her stout figure, and she made an attempt to avoid him, expecting some cruel joke as boys are wont to do, but he only handed her the pear. He knew she would not dare shoo him away under Hook’s eye.

Florentina and Celeste wasted no time in lavishing attentions on him. Hook remained pensive in his chair, studying the scene before him. Peter threw surreptitious glances his way, but averted his eyes if their gazes locked. He felt fearful hatred and a strange, gentle affection swirl together in his heart when he looked at this strange creature he had managed to trap and secure. He seemed to work charms on everyone around him, and even distrustful Camille could not dislike him for long. It was a myth he’d retrieved from the dirtiest, most mundane muck. And he never wanted to part with him.

Peter suddenly decided to do something rather bold, and began to caress parts on the girls that only Hook had touched before.

“Oh Celeste,” he said in the deepest voice he could muster. “How I love your plentiful ass!... And Florencia, my darling, take off my breeches and sit in my lap…” The girls laughed raucously to see this miniature parody, and kissed him over and over on the cheeks. The boy’s eyes were wholly on Hook, however.

“Insolent youth,” the captain finally muttered. The girls laughed and tried to shield Peter when Hook approached.

“Un comedien, eh?” Hook said, taking Peter by the ear and practically dragging him upstairs. Peter’s body heated up so much with fear and excitement that his ear did not seem to burn peculiarly in comparison to the rest of his face.

“Sod off!” He laughed as he tried to free himself, only to suddenly get shoved onto his bed.

“I think you’ve had enough fun for today. It’s time for children to sleep.”

“Oh, but I’ll sleep so much better if you…” Peter trailed off, grabbing at Hook’s coat to prevent him from leaving easily.

“We’ll have none of that. You’re like a dog that’s torn its leash all day today. Have you been sneaking wine?”

“No…” Peter was crawling out of his skin to be seductive. “Please… right now…” He wanted to say something naughty, and he would have had no qualms with anyone else, but his voice all but disappeared when he looked at the judgmental, intense eyes above him.

“I’ve told you, those days are over for you. And you’re still sick, you know.”

Peter pursed his lips. As if to emphasize Hook’s words, the burning sensations began creeping up in his body. _Calm down_ he commanded himself, but tears suddenly threatened to spill out. He took another plunge, speaking too quickly from his nervousness. "Your body makes me want to tear myself to shreds... It drives me wild with desire. If all men were like you, whoredom would be downright bliss..."

"Rather poetic language, if somewhat crass. I'll venture the brothel taught you those lines?"

Peter smiled. "Don't mean I never use them sincerely..."

"You vulgar little thing." Hook chuckled, running his hand through Peter's hair. “Why can’t you just pretend you’re a normal child, at least for my sake?”

“Why can’t you just pretend to like me?” Peter finally answered, his voice hardly above a whisper.

“I like you well enough,” Hook said, but his body language grew even more aloof. He got up and made for the door to leave Peter alone in the room.

Peter felt strange urgency—as if he would never see the captain again if he let him go now. He was grasping at straws. "Are you too old?" Evidently the wrong straws in this case, Peter thought to himself when he saw Hook’s face change.

"Too old for what?" the captain snapped, and Peter was sure he understood the drift well enough without further explanation. No matter—he couldn’t very well back down now, and besides, Hook might be more interested in doing something if his manhood were in question. Or so Peter hoped in the frantic thoughts that barely had time to race through his mind.

"Too old... for fun... that I can offer..."

Hook looked at him incredulously, but Peter could see he was at least somewhat troubled. He was beginning to sincerely regret bringing the question up.

"Because…" the boy said to fill in the awkward silence, more than anything else, but felt like he was digging himself into a deeper hole. "Because if you're getting on in years, I should tell you that when the Spanish ambassador dropped by our establishment, I entertained him all through the night, one way or another, and he was well over sixty--"

"We'll have no more of your fascinating tales here, and I never want to hear obscenities from you again, understand?" 

Peter nodded anxiously, but Hook did not even care to see his reaction, striding out the door as if to escape a house of plague. Peter gulped down his tears over and over as he washed his susceptible skin with the magnesium salts before going to bed, spreading the liquid around his mouth, then delving back to wash all his privates. 

He had said all the wrong things and Hook would never come near him again, he was certain. He had little decent reason to be unhappy. Then again, something made him crave to be back in London, in that nasty old bed, Tom pounding into him, and even though it hurt, both knowing full-well that Tom had no one else in the world to rival Peter’s place in his affections. They were vulgar, maybe even base, affections, but Peter knew his role there and felt beautiful and talented. Hook never failed to make him feel stupid, and even ugly nowadays. Peter walked over to the mantelpiece and gazed in the gilded round mirror above it. The reflection was convex and distorted, so it was difficult to judge his own appearance. He tried to wipe off his tears with the back of his wet hand, forgetting that the magnesium salts would sting even more acutely.

***

He desperately wanted to make amends and ventured to do just that the following morning, though he woke up with a body so sore he found it hard to walk. That’s what he got for getting himself agitated over nothing.

He eased the door of Hook's bedchamber open, glad that he had timed his entrance right-- Hook was awake but still lying in bed, as seemed to be his custom. He turned to Peter, and for a moment the boy had the urge to run back out whence he came. He swallowed and approached the bed as gracefully as possible, consciously twisting his hips just a bit more than necessary. He slid onto the bed, though not beneath the covers, not wishing to be impertinent.

"Hello," Hook said, unable to conceal his surprise. "What brings you here?"

Peter's spirits rose at the captain's easy tone. "Nothing. I was just wanting to say good morning. And sorry about yesterday, truly. And thank you for everything you've done for me--" He shut up, seeing Hook smile at his babbling.

"Quite a lot for a casual visit. Well then: good morning, you're forgiven, and you're welcome." Hook grinned.

“And I’ve decided that you’re right. I just want you to be pleased with me, Captain. I’ll act as you’ve been desiring all these days.”

Hook drew him in. “Come here.” Peter trembled as he felt a parental kiss place placed on his forehead. “You don’t mind those women being here, do you?”

Peter shook his head. “Unless you don’t like them, of course. I rather like them. They’re so nice. The women whores in London would gang up on young mollies and would rob and beat us with their hard shoes. But I’m good friends with yours.”

“Whores…” Hook repeated, smiling wistfully, before noticing the worry spread over Peter’s face when he thought he’d said something inappropriate again.

“Consorts, I mean, or I… I don’t know the proper words for women…”

“Alright, alright, just don’t tremble. Go eat and then entertain yourself outside. Can you find something to do?”

Peter nodded and walked out. He had no desire to tell Hook that he was feeling pains deep inside him again.

***

“He say the boy of him and yours caught by the polizia for the going into garden of the neighbor,” Florentina translated hurriedly from the words of the man standing in the doorway.

Everybody had already been quite restless even before the man showed up at the door. Darkness had fallen hours ago, and though Hook would not verbally acknowledge his worry over the boy’s absence he could not do much more than sit and bite at the toothpick from dinner, pretending to be immersed in his reading material. Even now his face remained rather impassive, though he had already donned his coat just before the man came, planning to go out and look for the boy himself. “Peter was taken?”

The two women nodded frantically and began babbling amongst themselves. The man was imploring something, but Hook could not hope to make out the rushed Italian with the heavy local dialect.

“He say please get his boy from the prigione. It needs money.”

“Tell him I’ll do it if he can tell me where they were taken.”

“Palermo… prigione… the closed house.”

“The prison?” Hook cursed as he saw them nod. Though he had no acquaintance with the prisons in this country, he could imagine they were not quite so different from the squalid, violent establishments in England. Thankfully he had never once had direct experience with the inner workings of such places, but some of his crewmembers’ horror stories had been enough. There was nothing left to be done except head straight into the city as soon as possible. The horses were readied and Hook stomped out, shaking his head, the girls following him to the carriage, staying behind to wring their hands and babble to each other in worried tones that he did not care to hear.

***

They had finally summoned someone with a considerable understanding of English. The little man sat at the desk, straining to hold his monocle in place even as he shuffled through old dusty documentation.

“Is this all about the pears? Where is this man? I will pay him for those ridiculous pears. I’ll buy him another orchard of his godforsaken pears! Pere.. pere… pagare for the pere…”

“It is not only that crime, signor. It is, ah, moreover, ah... the man love of Sodoma.” 

Even here there was no respite. Englishmen were moreover easier to bribe in his native tongue. Hook finally turned to speak to Peter, who was listening to the whole conversation intently, clutching the bars of the cell he shared with five others. “Are you an idiot? Why would you ever tell them that?”

“I… I didn’t,” Peter mumbled, his face almost narrow enough to squeeze through the bars.

Hook sharply turned away to face the guard.

“How much? Quanto… quanto lira? To get him out? To… eh…” Hook said, pointing to the lock of the jail cell.

“We are much excuse, signor, but he is a prisoner of Palermo. Signor cannot buy them to return, unless we have proof that you are good citizen.”

Hook walked out of the building, trying not to think about how pathetic Peter had looked clutching at the bars or how ridiculous the entire situation was. He must have looked a fright that morning, having spent all night pacing around the jail until it opened, and now just barely making it out of the building without gutting someone from frustration. At least he knew his destination well now.

A servant answered the door, trying to declare that the doctor was not receiving patients yet, even as the doctor burst out past him still in his nightshirt, evidently having recognized the broken Italian speech of the visitor.

“‘Good morning’, come dite. Where is mio piccolo bambino?”

“Piccolo bambino is precisely what I’m here about. He is in prison… prigione. Can you come down to the ufficio governativo and sign that you know who I am, and who Peter is? That Peter is your patient… paziente?”

The doctor squinted, digesting the words, his face lighting up when he finally understood. 

“If he is my paziente, why I see him not so… spesso?”

Hook was willing to offer anything at the moment. “I’ll bring him. I’ll bring him often.”

“You don’t understand. That bambino is uni… unico.”

“Unique, si, capisco, capisco, but can we--”

“He is… eh… child but diseases like adult.” Both he and Hook were slowly reverting to hand signs to fill in inadequacies in their respective languages. “And I think first when I see bambino he is fast grow, but then I think he is not, eh… grow. Very slow grow, not fast. You can’t know age?”

“No, I don’t know. I don’t think he’s over fourteen.”

“But you don’t see his eye—his eye… has years of… sporcizia”

“Cataracts?”

“Yes, cataracts! Cataracts… yes… And number of disease—it is stupendo.”

“Stupendo? What, are you happy? You felice?”

“No, no… it is interesting.”

Hook was thoroughly annoyed by now. “If you won’t come with me to sign I’ll have to look for someone else then?” Never mind that he had no one else in this city to turn to. Even were he to summon them, the inhabitants of his household were hardly respectable sources.

“No, no, I go with you. But you come every two week to me. I want to see my piccolo bambino spesso before he die.”

“He won’t die. He’s feeling much better.”

The doctor nodded his head, and retreated back into his house to get dressed.

***

Thankfully the doctor had an overwhelmingly good reputation in the city, and the little official hurriedly filled all the release forms out without any further troubles. Hook paid for Peter and the other two peasant boys whose fathers were awaiting them. The two were about Peter’s apparent age, and begged for a ride home though they steered clear of Peter now. Hook could guess well enough why, seeing Peter’s tattered state when they were taken out of the cell full of other hardened criminals. They were riding home now, finally. The two boys not being admitted into the carriage, were sitting on the back, out in the open air though there was a light drizzle. Hook wanted to be alone with Peter. He was angry at no one in particular. He should have been angry at Peter, but the boy was sitting in the carriage seat across him so timidly that it was impossible to entertain such feelings for long. He refrained from speaking however, waiting for Peter to get up his courage and break the silence.

“How often did you promise to go?”

“He’d like to see you every fortnight,” Hook said, taking care to keep annoyance out of his tone. Peter’s eyes fled to the floor. The boy had not dared to say anything directly to Hook since they left the jailhouse, though he guessed well enough who had vouched for their identities when Hook led him to the doctor’s immediately after his release. Peter's posture was still uncharacteristically hunched over, obviously shamed by the predicament he’d gotten himself into.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s no concern of mine. You’re the one who’s going to have him peering into all your orifices.”

“He said I need to do something like needlework. To keep my eyes and fingers sharp and all that.”

“He told me.”

Peter looked out the window. “I don’t really feel that bad. I get spots in my eyes, and my legs shake sometimes…” He trailed off slightly when he saw Hook look up sharply. “But… but I think… I probably do have the pox, but it’s not hurt me for years…” 

Hook watched the boy play with the laces from his new shirt. His old clothing was far too begrimed after his stay in the jail for Hook to suffer him to walk around like that, though Peter’s breath still hitched when they threw the clothes away into the street as if they were nothing but rags.

“So, pray tell, how did they know of your occupation?”

Peter winced. “It always worked in London…”

“What did?” There was the annoyance showing through clear as day. Peter sniffed wiping at his eyes. “Don’t touch your eyes. You might spread something to them.”

“I… well… they came to chase us. I ran far before he caught up to me. I was more than halfway home from that orchard, but he caught up to me, and tackles me to the ground, and I see it. I _see_ that he’s the kind that wouldn’t mind it, so I offer to… to exchange for freedom.”

“Exchange?”

Peter sighed, playing with his laces even more frantically as if it could divert his attention. “Suck him off. And he nods his head and promises to let me go if I do. And I do a excellent job of it—and hell knows, he liked it well enough—but he still takes me up by the arm and leads me back, sneering ugly as hell, telling them that I were a lecherous whore ‘sif he didn’t make use of my services.”

“But you offered first?”

“I didna want to end up in jail and trouble you.”

“And sucking off the law would help you with that, you thought.”

“It’d work in London. I can tell apart those that’ll go for it and those that won’t.” Peter finally looked up from the floor, pained. “I know you think I’m stupid. Well, I can’t help being stupid. Might as well make the best of it, shouldn't I? Might as well try to get by.”

“That has nothing to do with anything.”

“You’re just such a goddamn judge most of the time. I feel like my soul shrivels when you look on me. And… and I know you’re treating me far better than I’m deserving of, so I have no right to be complaining, but I feel like such an idjit all the time. I can’t help you in the only way I know how to help.”

“You’re so desperate to help?” Hook suddenly launched himself across the carriage, drawing out a handkerchief and stuffing it against Peter’s mouth before his lips assaulted the same spot. It was a short and violent kiss, and though they were separated by several folds of linen, each could feel the heat of the other’s breath. Hook came away and sat back on the seat opposite Peter’s.

“There. You helped me in the way you wanted. Are you satisfied?”

Peter burst into tears and, knowing Hook did not pity sniveling, began to cover his face and choke back the sobs. Hook remained impassive. Though he was sure the boy took it as mocking, it had felt very liberating to finally do something he had been so tempted to do before. To think he’d ever be so coy with a whore, in his old age.

“I’m… sorry,” the boy spoke when he thought he had regained control of his voice. “I don’t think I got enough sleep yesternight.”

“They kept you occupied, eh?”

“Dju have to ask?” Peter looked out the window. “After they’d all heard what I was in there for they could barely wait until dark. ‘Tleast I managed it so that they didna touch any of the other boys.”

“What, you want congratulations for being a martyr?” Why was he being horrible? He was wringing pleasure from the boy’s pain, and for what? His act had already been punished twice over.

“I don’t want anything but for you to be pleased with me, but I canna ever manage it, it seems. I give myself freely just to keep myself safe. If I didna whore myself, I’d still be sore and come out with bruises and cuts.”

Hook stared at Peter’s face—a light blush lingering on his cheeks, cracked lips showing evidence of the recent ill-use. It could not be helped much longer.

Peter sensed the stare, but not its intent. “Why question me about every single nasty bloke I’ve had to do because of my stupidity or weakness or poverty? You want me to tell you about each one that did me up against the bars last night?”

“No. I’m only jealous.”

Peter looked up, too hesitant to entertain hopes about the meaning of those words. They did it silently—Hook unbuttoning and putting on the sheath, Peter slipping down to the floor, tying the sheath’s laces even as he began to suck eagerly, then—deeming everything ready—stripping down.

Everything was done with seasoned skill, Hook marveled, even in the unstable environment of the carriage on the rough country road. Peter knelt on the seat, facing away-- too afraid he’d blush to death if he were face-to-face with those critical eyes. He lowered himself down slowly with each knee on the outer side of Hook's thigh. On the one hand he wanted to speak, wanted to ask if he was pleasing, to ask if Hook wanted him to try clenching tighter still. It was too intimidating to start a conversation, so Peter simply guessed to clench down and establish a steady rhythm, praying that his patron was enjoying himself. He felt a rough hand come up and trace his spine as he rocked up and down. Peter smiled, knowing the pretty arching he’d been taught was now being rewarded. 

“Faster?” The boy finally exhaled the word in one breathy sound, still not daring to turn around.

“Let’s…” The tremble in the captain’s voice brought Peter new confidence. They were both keeping quiet except the heavy breathing—not really wishing for the driver or their passengers to be able to hear what was happening inside—but their voices betrayed the heat of their union. Peter suddenly felt the man’s midsection leap from the seat as he stood up, grabbing Peter’s legs and suspending the boy practically in mid-air, pushing him forward until his hand desperately found anchoring on the opposite seat. Between the violent rutting of Hook's hips into Peter’s from behind and the frequent jolts of the entire carriage, it was all the boy could do to hold on to the edge of the seat to keep both of them steady.

Then came the end, just as quickly as the entire thing began. Hook removed himself and Peter collapsed naked and panting on the opposite seat while the captain brought him to order. Peter jerked when Hook discarded the sheath out the window.

“Weren’t… weren’t I to your liking?” he stuttered, his senses still reeling from the physically demanding position they’d just engaged in. He wished he could have serviced Hook in a more fitting state, not sore from a previous night’s brutalities.

Hook looked over at Peter, smiling a little sadly. Why had he given in to the impulse? “Greatly to my liking.” 

“Then… an’t we ever going to do it again?”

Hook burst out laughing. Would the boy ever be cured of his frugality? “Perhaps we will, but I don’t keep around used things.”

“You keep me, don’t you?” Peter winked. Some of the boy’s confidence was finally returning. He pulled his clothes back on, sitting back into his seat opposite Hook.

“I can do more, you know. I was just fearing you were angry with me, so I didn’t feel up to interrupting with my babble…”

“It’s alright. Enough for me for a first time, I assure you. But you must promise not to ever ask for it. Don’t even mention it at home.”

Peter nodded earnestly. His excitement was beginning to wear off into drowsiness, and his head bounced painfully when his relaxing neck didn’t compensate for the carriage’s shakes.

“Come here. I’ll hold you so you can sleep. We still have hours ahead of us before we reach home.”

Peter moved across timidly, afraid to intrude on the man’s space, but Hook took him up in his arms.

“You didn’t sleep all night either, didja?” Peter said, running his fingers along the chin above him, roughened with bristles.

“Nonsense.” Hook was trying to keep a straight face. “Why would I come to Palermo in hopes of rescuing you, pacing outside the jail, then pacing outside the office, then selling my soul to some doctor so he can come sign for me…”

Peter cringed. “I’m sorry. I won’t ever go into other people’s properties.”

Hook stared out the window at the fields, and was about to add something when he noticed the child in his arms had already fallen into uneasy sleep, eyelids trembling ever so faintly, dreams troubling him where life could not. The boy was happy, Hook reasoned to himself. He would not have defiled him if it would not have made the boy happy. What did it matter? It was not as though the boy hadn’t been getting almost as much action lately as in his working days. No difference, Hook assured himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Dama" would really be the proper name for checkers in Italy. "Droughts" in England. The board in vogue in the early 18th century was 10x10.
> 
> Condoms were expensive and were usually reused after washing.
> 
> 18th century carriages were pretty similar to their English counterparts but roomier. Something like a stagecoach, but a little lighter, because 4 mph is really a miserable speed, even for country roads.
> 
> The 17th century prison in Palermo, formerly the host of atrocious tortures under the Inquisition (among other more mundane functions) is being turned into a museum.


	6. Chapter 6

Peter was content to smile knowingly at Hook for only a few days. Though he dared not disobey and explicitly ask, he tried very hard to let it be known that he was primed and ready for another encounter. When Hook ignored him, the boy slid back into paranoia about his skills. Sure that he had not been all that Hook had looked forward to, he drifted like a ghost through the rooms, inventing elaborate plans to give his caretaker the ride of a lifetime if only given the chance.

Hook deeply regretted giving in to his urges. Not that he found the boy lacking—God knew, he had been satisfied so thoroughly only a few times before. It was simply disappointing how easily he had turned a precious possession into just another household whore. Peter didn’t, and probably would never remember his fantastical past, but Hook had imagined him to be something extraordinary even in the ways of sex. Yet Peter was quite ordinary—experienced but ordinary. His only quality was eternal childhood, and even that was marred. Hook could not decide if he felt better or worse about leaving an ordinary child to an awful fate.

After feeling the boy rub up against him with unnecessary intimacy one too many times, Hook decided to call off his decree confining Peter to stay indoors. He installed a simple swing off a tree in the wooded area near the house, and this was large enough to be used by all three of his permanent houseguests at once. Amazing how much giggling and simple pleasure could be derived from a piece of wood strung up by a long rope, the man thought, but he would be the last to complain as he played spectator to their games. They stood on the board, holding on to the rope strung through the middle, calling on him to swing them-- the girls’ skirts blown to and fro, obscenely exposing their knees, and Peter Pan, face contorting with delight, hair billowing around his face, eyes burning with dangerlust, always calling for Hook to push them even harder until the girls would start shrieking and demanding pause in the game.

Tales about what had happened in the jail spread like fire in the countryside, of course, and boys from all over would gather not too far from the house, shouting insults at Peter when he came out on the side facing the country road. Flora and Celeste were puzzled at first at the accusations, but quickly interpreted what had happened as an example of the innocent martyr-like quality of their protégé, and only the housekeeper muttered angrily about having to serve in a house of sin such as this one, though on the day of payment she usually bore her tragic fate better. 

Only Hook was mildly worried, often watching the boy from the window when he was outside alone, seeing him make obscene gestures in reply to the taunts. Once Peter ran off to fight them, outnumbered three to one, and Hook was sorely tempted to come out and give them a beating—if not a proper gutting—as well, but he was desperate to see… see something. A glimmer of true Peter Pan perhaps. He watched the figures in the distance, pleased to see the three of them finally run away. The fourth returned to the house, dragging its feet. Hook receded from the window and waited for Peter to come through the front door, then realized the boy had decided to take the servants’ passage.

There he stood on the doorstep, plenty of blood still dripping from a split lip onto the wooden floor as the cook and housekeeper tried to clean him up.

“Fought them off?”

Peter mumbled a barely coherent “Yeah.” 

“Such humbleness. I’d say it’s a worthy victory.”

“Hardly. They don’t realize I’m not a little child such as they are. I had to know how to handle idiots like that to live in London.” Peter’s face turned away. “Why are you here, anyway. I didna want you to see me looking like all ruddy hell.”

Hook wiped away some blood before taking Peter by the hand. “Why not? I have tonics for cuts upstairs.”

They walked silently, Peter following Hook, coughing occasionally. Once they were in the Peter’s room, Hook stripped him down to reveal a myriad of other scrapes and bruises, and began applying iodine tincture to every area with broken skin.

“What made you come after them this time anyway? Going one against three…” Hook stopped realizing Peter now knew that he had been watched.

“Cause they had no right screaming about how my ass opens up wide as a barrel when two of them were the ones in the cell with me, huddling in the corner probably pissing themselves from fearing they’d be next. And nastiness about you too—how you keep me for pleasure, when you’re a reputable man who can barely stand me and my filthiness…” 

There was an awkward pause. The boy was desperate again, but Hook would not use this as an excuse to despoil him again.

Crestfallen at the apparent truth of his own words, Peter continued. “At least my cheeks and nose didna break, so I’ll be pretty to look on again, if I heal some. Would you like that?…” 

Hook was on his knees, applying the iodine to cuts on the skinny legs in front of him in silence, pretending not to notice the tension in the boy.

“…Do you care a fig?”

“I care,” Hook muttered without looking up. “But it’s no longer your job to look nice, so don’t fret so much.”

“But I like looking nice…”

Hook rose to his feet, chuckling lightly when he looked at the boy’s body in brown splotches. A veritable leopard, he teased.

Peter’s eyes widened in sudden fear. “Leper?”

Hook had to put all the boy’s fears about being sent away or having the horrid malady to rest, which took surprisingly long, and then go on and explain about what sort of animal it was that he was referring to.

Peter stared at his body, unable to ignore the realization that his skin might have looked this motley if he didn’t take so much care every night to stop each skin ulcer. The medicine was wonderful for that, though it smelt terrible, and he was still very grateful to the doctor. Hook didn’t know, and wouldn’t have to know. Peter knew the first rule of his kind of life was that every effort had to be made to keep up appearances of health.

***

Now that Peter was forbidden from leaving the estate proper there was less to do outdoors, but the captain did more and more to keep him entertained. To the chagrin of the housekeeper and cook, Hook allowed Peter to bring various animals into the house. As most of these were from the nearby pond, they consisted of mostly large insects, frogs, and the occasional duckling. Occasional shrieking became common, and though Celeste and Flora found many of the boy’s antics funny and endearing they still feared toads more than death. Hook was most fascinated with watching Peter catch dragonflies—hands swift but delicate enough not to crush their wings.

“I like things that fly,” Peter explained once while showing Hook a particularly huge specimen. His eyes seemed to want to escape their sockets when Hook informed him that the name of the creature in his hands was called a dragonfly.

“A fly like a dragon?”

“Haven’t you ever seen one before?” 

Peter shook his head. “I don’t think they like the Thames.”

“Who does, besides the corpses that float up in it?” Hook laughed, and Peter immediately took advantage, letting the dragonfly fly free and insinuating himself into his caretaker’s lap. Hook went no further than stroking the boy’s hair, so Peter resigned himself to acting the child and laid his head on Hook’s shoulder.

“Might we… might we take the carriage and go to the doctor’s?” The way he was sitting allowed him to feel the chuckle that followed be born deep within Hook’s chest and rattle up to his throat.

“Are you more interested in the doctor or the carriage ride? If there’s something really wrong, I’ll have the stableman take you into town.”

Indeed they had been completely remiss in returning on the promised fortnight interval, but Hook preferred to make as few visits as possible. At this time he didn’t feel up to spending the better part of a day in that same carriage alone with the boy.

Peter sighed. Much as he had wanted to take advantage of another long ride, there were things wrong. He found he didn’t have sensation in his legs when he woke up in the morning, and sometimes his fingertips. And the spots in his eyes were sometimes bad enough to make him want to close them.

“I’ll be going with him then.”

“There’s something really bothering you?”

Peter was staring somewhere at the ground. It felt counter-productive to divulge maladies that could not be seen. “A little bit. It’s nothing, I just need some medicine probably.”

He couldn’t help but smile when Hook squeezed him to his chest and promised to accompany him to the city the next day himself.

***

The doctor had been displeased that they had not returned regularly, muttering something about the human body being more than a machine you take to repair only when it’s broken. The prognosis terrified Hook. Peter had been surprisingly diligent in rubbing down any ruptures on his skin, but there was nothing to do about the ulceration eating him away inside. The boy was dying from the inside out. It was only a matter of time, the doctor claimed in his broken English, before Peter began losing his wits, among other things.

“Don’t look so sad,” Peter said hastily as Hook climbed up to join him in the carriage. “I already know what I have, you don’t have to hide it from me. I’ve seen it in others. I always pull through, maybe this one won’t take me down either…”

Hook nodded and looked out the window. 

Peter shifted uncomfortably and sat silent for some time.

“If… if you don’t want to be involving yourself with me, just know I don’t bear grudge. Tom pumped into me every time he got the chance, but he was filth-ridden himself. Think he had the pox even before me. Even he didn’t let me go into his lodging when I had my hands and face erupt with it. I couldn’t get work either, in that state, but begging was easier than usual. It was summer, so I managed. I went back to Tom when it’d healed, but he told me that I wasn’t ever going to be rid of it now…”

Hook finally looked over and saw tears streaming down Peter’s cheeks, though his voice hardly betrayed it.

“I – I just don’t wanna die! And I wanna stay pretty, not like those pox sufferers I’d seen, drying up like raisins with their nose all decaying and hollow, on their ugly crutches…”

Hook took Peter and held him with bruising force, quickly slipping a folded handkerchief between their lips as he kissed the boy. They felt the heat of each other’s mouths through the cloth, their noses still bare and rubbing past each other side to side. Peter’s heart sang, and he felt important and needed again.

“There’s always a way out, boy. If you ever feel it’s bad enough, there’s a drug…”

Peter shook his head. “I want to _live_. I want to live forever and ever and ever, and I want to make you happy…” It was obvious what the boy was aiming for, as he straddled Hook, arching his back. 

“Are you sure you won’t ache inside?”

“I’ll be alright. As long as I can make someone else happy, life is worth living.”

They did it facing each other, much more relaxed this time, Peter staring into Hook’s eyes as he impaled himself over and over, frantic as though death would catch up with him before his job was done. They stayed together, wrapping themselves into embrace, Peter’s body still applying delicious pressure variation around the quickly subsiding erection.

“Do you ever come, my pretty nymph?” Hook said, running his fingers along each protruding vertebra.

“I come dry. It’s very much in fashion nowadays, you know. People think I’m still twelve years old because of it.”

“And just what age are you?”

Peter pulled back to face Hook again. “Don’t _you_ know, Captain?”

“Hell if I do. I don’t know how long you’ve been around when I’d picked you up from--”

Peter suddenly clapped his hands over his ears. “I don’t wanna hear about it… I don’t wanna!”

“Why not?” Hook asked, rather perplexed.

“Because I know it’s something bad. I remember some of it. It wasn’t any good, none of it. I’m happier nowadays.”

Hook couldn’t let this go now. “No, lad, you were quite happy before I laid my hands on you. You lived in a paradise of your own making.”

Peter relaxed a bit and smiled. “Oh, you mean that story about me flying with the fairy people?”

“Yes, ‘that’ story. And since you refuse to believe it, I will wager you don’t remember that it was you who deprived me of my hand.”

He had gone too far again, in some weird quest to restore Peter’s memory, though he had despised the boy at that stage in their lives. Peter went rigid, voice croaking as he said he didn’t quite understand the joke.

“It’s nothing,” Hook said. His hand alighted on Peter’s waist and the boy was instantly immersed in efforts to regenerate the man’s excitement inside himself, rocking his hips back and forth, happy to be back to turf he understood.

Only a skilled whore could excite him twice in such rapid succession Hook mused—leaning his head back this time, and enjoying the boy’s efforts without making eye contact. The boy also found it easier to say something now that he didn’t have to stare into piercing blue.

“If… if it gets so that I’m not pretty to look on anymore… you can give me that drug… I never want to be ugly to you… I don’t want you to remember me all gopping and falling apart...”

Hook cursed silently, pretending not to hear as he neared climax again. Damn the boy for being so unaware of just how wretched he sounded.

***

It was the first time Hook awoke before his two bedmates. He heard it as a soft kind of mewling coming from the next-door room. The two girls snuggled closer together when he extricated himself from between them and wrapped a simple robe around his body.

Peter was sitting up in his bed, hesitantly calling for the captain. Hook approached him, still rubbing at eyes weighed down by a rather late retirement to bed.

“I… I didna wanna wake you so early, but I can’t… I just canna feel my legs at all this morning. No matter what I do…” Tears were threatening to spill out.

Hook sighed heavily and uncovered the boy’s lower half, sitting on the bed and rubbing his feet, asking the boy if he felt anything. He wished he had two hands at that moment, but entrusted one of the feet to be revived by Peter himself. Strong callused fingers kneaded the small foot, trying to return life to it.

“And sometimes they go jerking about, so that it keeps me awake at night. I don’t understand it,” Peter said, looking forlorn. “I’ve seen the pox, and the legs don’t usually suffer this much. Not the first thing anyway…”

Hook couldn’t help feeling guilt at having used the boy only a few days prior.

Feeling in Peter’s legs gradually revived, but not before the entire household had woken up and stood staring from the doorway of the boy’s room. Camille was muttering something about how evil was repaid with evil from heaven, while the keeper of the stables offered less medical advice than complete bunk.

“Do you understand that this is a boy is not a horse!?” Hook finally shouted in exasperation across the room.

Flora and Celeste paced around the room worriedly, wringing their hands and whispering in worried tones to each other. Peter stood up, but had to lean heavily on Hook to walk across the floor.

Over the next few days, the symptoms became worse, the legs sometimes unresponsive, sometimes thrown into unsettling fits and tremors. Hook found his courage failing, and left him to the women for most of the day. Flora and Celeste had by and by deduced Peter’s real former occupation-- the housekeeper’s grumbling making the task easy. Far from being aghast and disapproving, as Hook had feared, they pampered the boy to no end, certain that he was an embodiment of angelic suffering, and tended to his every superficial need.

“Sunlight, orange marmalade and needlepoint – who will think this thing will make a boy happy?” Celeste asked Hook when he came by to see Peter sitting in the easy chair outside.

“I know the doctor recommended needlepoint, but must you girls further humiliate him with these?” Hook untied the brightly colored bows the girls had tied around Peter’s wrists.

“I’m not humiliated.” Peter smiled up at him. “I was just thinking you might like them.”

Hook smiled and left. Peter went back to his needlework, determined not to lose coordination in his hands. Nowadays it was sometimes harder to see the needlework than to do it.

“Such rude!” Flora laughed. “Men never understand.”

Though he avoided Peter through much of the day, at night Hook performed the most difficult and gruesome part of the routine. Everything was harder now that Peter had mostly lost function in his legs, but the boy bore everything patiently, helping as much as he could and never letting out screams that would frighten the household. Silver colloid still made him retch, and the mercury vapor bath was almost unbearable even for Hook, but the boy tried to smile as often as possible to express his gratitude.

Visits to the doctor grew more frequent, though Hook took along his consorts for the carriage ride, so that they could do their shopping in the city. This largely avoided long awkward silences.

***

Peter moaned as the doctor ran a swab of linen across his insides. Hook looked over reluctantly. Though he remained in the room throughout the visit, he still preferred not to watch certain things.

“Why are you always doing that? It scratches him. It hurts. Dolore. What for?”

The doctor gave a light smirk and only continued with his work, Peter rattling the chair.

“Eh? Answer, dammit. Perchè? What the hell are you doing anyway?”

The doctor hardly looked over when Hook walked up to the chair, standing poised over it. Peter smiled at him around the rag stuffed into his mouth for safety, tears streaming down his face grown crimson from the position and no doubt the pain.

“You must this ragazzo stay at infermeria di Palermo. Vita bella! Good life until muore.”

“Si, si, until he dies. I know how it is with you doctors,” Hook said, trying to extricate Peter out of the examination chair. “Ragazzo is not dying, and I’m not leaving him in any case.”

“Non capite… He is… unico. If I learn him, we will know more medicina. Soon no boy.”

“That’s lovely, but nessun grazie. I can give him vita bella too, so kindly take those instruments out and let us go home.”

“Non capite, non capite! You look—” The doctor ran over to a cabinet and took out a bottle of gunk.

“What is that?” Hook asked, not exactly sure if he wanted to know the answer. If it was new medicine, he was sure they had enough already, bought and ready to be transported back home.

“It is—I wipe…” He pointed to the forceps holding the linen that he had left inside Peter. “Wipe and throw into botti… bottiglia… it is cow’s blood in bottiglia… to feed, and no death. It is, eh, immortale.”

Hook felt himself losing color. This was just what he needed—a doctor with side hobbies in nosy inquiry. He made to remove everything from Peter’s body and release the straps binding his ankles, but the doctor ran up to Peter and began to question him after removing the rag from his mouth.

“You drink alchemia? You see gold? Eh… mago make gold?”

Peter shook his head, looking rather frightened. “I don’t remember anything about my past.”

The doctor almost yelped for joy, clapping his hands once just as Hook freed the boy and began to dress him, contemplating carrying him out in the nude if only it would expedite their exit.

“Bambino di alchemia! Truth is leggenda!”

The doctor ran shouting it after Hook all the way to the carriage, apparently sensing that Hook had decided never to return.

“You have bambino di alchemia. Leggenda! It is answer for universe, everything!”

Hook emphatically closed the door to the carriage, instructing the coachmen to hurry and head for market to collect Flora and Celeste from their outing.

“I an’t ever going to get better, am I…” Peter said in dejection, absent-mindedly staring out of the carriage at the old doctor still managing to run alongside them, waving his arms about.

Hook didn’t answer and pretended to immerse himself in the search for his two girls. “Where do they always manage to get to? More trouble than they’re worth, honestly.”

“Less trouble than I tend to be,” Peter said, and Hook was relieved to see him smiling instead of sulking. “They’re really very nice to me. I’m glad you invited them to stay—I an’t lonely, and they letcha rest from seeing me all day long.”

“Pan, I don’t…” Hook stopped in mid-sentence, resolving to spend more time with the boy since the illness had made him quit his lascivious demands to practice his trade.

“I kinda wish you’d sow your oats with them.”

“What?” 

“Well… eh, that’s to say have your own brood.”

“Have _children_?”

Peter shrank back into his seat. “Yeah…? Don’t high-on-up people ever have some?”

Hook tried to understand why the idea seemed so anathema to him, but couldn’t conjure up one rational explanation. Neither could he guess why Peter would suddenly concern himself with such nonsense.

Peter’s eyes fled to the window, and he suddenly spotted the girls running toward the main street through the crowds. They climbed in, huffing and puffing, laughing about something or other and both sat on either side of Peter.

“We sit with Peter today, because he’s the most favorite,” Florentina said in singsong. The girls proceeded to question Peter about how his visit went, lavishing kisses on his head, showing him trinkets and toys they bought for him at the market with unparalleled excitement. Hook watched the boy sit smiling wide, his body drowned between two large pannier dresses on either side.

Some carriage rides should go on forever, Hook thought. Even later, as he watched all three of them fallen asleep, leaning on each other, mouths slightly open—looking more innocent than a church painting—he couldn’t help but wish the road to the estate were just a little longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On alchemy: So we finally get to the crux of why I even starting writing this. _The word 'alchemy' is derived from the Arabian phrase "al-kimia," which refers to the preparation of the Stone or Elixir by the Egyptians, and its root comes from the Coptic "khem" (fertile black soil of the Nile delta). Esoterically and hieroglyphically, the word refers to the dark mystery of the primordial or First Matter (the Khem), the One Thing through which all creation manifests. Alchemy, then, is the Great Work of nature that perfects this chaotic matter, whether it be expressed as the metals, the cosmos, or the substance of our souls._ Alchemists believed that the secret to eternal life was intertwined in the secret of transforming iron into gold. Mercury was a popular candidate catalyst for this, and there are many instances of people drinking mercury in their quest to halt the decay of their bodies. It's interesting that mercury DID halt decay caused by such diseases as syphilis (not used today only because of the rather unpleasant side effects). Syphilis has often been viewed as a sped-up caricature of the general decay of the body from living.   
>  There is documented usage of mercury to gain eternal youth in the Chinese Imperial courts.  
> *imagination totally captured by the idea of a youth-preserving poison*
> 
> On dialect: Obviously, any attempt at actually reproducing speech patterns of that time period is difficult, if not impossible (due to lack of data, and also sheer laziness) so I only give tokens of trying. But I'd just like to point out that "an't" has an interesting history-- if only "ain't" didn't get in the way-- with its catastrophically plebeian reputation-- we might all still be saying "an't" just as we say "can't" and "won't."
> 
> Panniers are the framework of wire/whalebone/other material used to puff out women's skirts in the early 1700's


End file.
